NATURAL HISTORY 



OP 



ENTHUSIASM. 



BY ISAAC TAYLOR. 



Svo earl, to plv dperft (pvaixii, 
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FROM THE NINTH LONDON EDITION. 



NEW YORK: 
ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS 
No. 28 5 BROADWAY. 
1853. 









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ADVERTISEMENT. 



The belief that a bright era of renovation, union, and 
extension, presently awaits the Christian Church, seems 
to be very generally entertained. The writer of this 
volume participates in the cheering hope; and it has 
impelled him to undertake the difficult task of describing, 
under its various forms, that fictitious piety which 
hitherto has never failed to appear in times of unusual 
religious excitement, and which may be anticipated as 
the probable attendant of a new development of the 
powers of Christianity. 

But while it has been the writer's principal aim to pre- 
sent to the Christian reader, in as distinct a manner as 
possible, the characters of that specious illusion which 
too often supplants genuine piety, he has also endeavored 
so to fix the sense of the term Enthusiasm as to wrest it 
from those who misuse it to their own infinite damage. 

The author would say a word in explanation of his 
choice of a term in this instance ; and of the extent of 
meaning he has assigned to it. The best that can be 
done, when matters of mind are under discussion, is to 
select, from the stores of familiar language, a word which, 



IV ADVERTISEMENT. 

in its usual sense, approximates more nearly than any 
other to the abstraction spoken of. To require from an 
ethical writer more than this, would be to demand that, 
before he enters upon his subject, he should both renovate 
the science of mind, and reform his mother tongue : for 
when things not yet scientifically defined are to be spoken 
of, it must needs happen that, in proportion to the accu- 
racy with which they are described, there will be apparent 
occasion for taking exception against the sense imputed 
to the term employed. 

The author proposed it to himself, as his task, to depict, 
under its principal forms, fictitious sentiment in matters 
of religion, including, of course, a consideration of those 
opinions which seem to be either the parents or the off- 
spring of such artificial sentiments. Having this object 
before him, he would have thought it a very inauspicious, 
as well as cumbrous method, to have constructed a many- 
syllabled phrase of definition, to be used on every page 
of his essay. Instead of attempting any such laborious 
accuracy, he has boldly chosen his single term — Enthu- 
siasm; confiding in the good sense and candor of his 
readers for allowing him a span or two of latitude when 
employing it in different instances, which seem to come 
under the same general class. 



CONTENTS. 



SECTION I. 

PA OK 

Enthusiasm, Secular and Religious, .... 7 

SECTION II. 
Enthusiasm in Devotion, 27 

section m. 

Enthusiastic Perversions of the Doctrine of Divine In- 
fluence, 62 

SECTION IV. 
Enthusiasm the Source of Heresy, .... 79 

SECTION V. 
Enthusiasm of Prophetic Interpretation, ... 96 

SECTION VI. 

Enthusiastic Abuses of iie Doctrine of a Particular Prov- 
idence, 120 

SECTION VII. 
Enthusiasm of Philanthropy, . . . 163 



VI CONTENTS. 



SECTION VIII. 

PAGK 

Sketch of the Enthusiasm of the Ancient Church, . .177 



SECTION IX. 

The same Subject. — Ingredients of the Ancient Mona- 

chism, 201 



SECTION X. 

Hints on the probable Spread of Christianity, submitted to 
those who misuse the term — Enthusiasm, 



NATURAL HISTORY OF ENTHUSIASM. 



SECTION I. 

ENTHUSIASM, SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS. 

Some form of beauty, engendered by the imagina- 
tion, or some semblance of dignity or grace, invests 
almost every object that excites desire. These illu- 
sions, if indeed they ought so to be called, serve the 
purpose of blending the incongruous materials of 
human nature, and by mediating between body and 
spirit, reconcile the animal and intellectual propen- 
sities, and give dignity and harmony to the charac- 
ter of man. By these unsubstantial impressions it 
is that the social affections are enriched and en- 
livened ; by these, not less than by the superiority 
of the reasoning faculties, mankind is elevated above 
the brute ; and it is these that, as the germinating 
principles of all improvement and refinement, dis- 
tinguish civilized from savage life. 

The constitutional difference between one man 
and another is to be traced, in great measure, to the 
quality and vigor of the imagination. Thus it will 
be found that eminently active and energetic spirits 



8 ENTHUSIASM, 

are peculiarly susceptible to those natural exaggera- 
tions by which the mind enhances the value of 
whatever it pursues. At the same time an efficient 
energy implies always the power of control over 
such impressions. Yet it is enough that these crea- 
tions of fancy should be under the command of rea- 
son ; for good sense by no means demands a rigid 
scrutiny into the composition or mechanism of com- 
mon motives, or asks that whatever is not abso- 
lutely substantial in the objects of desire should be 
spurned. He who is not too wise to be happy, 
leaves the machinery of human nature to accomplish 
its revolutions unexplored, and is content to hold 
the mastery over its movements. Whoever, instead 
of simply repressing the irregularities of the ima- 
gination, and forbidding its predominance, would 
altogether exclude its influence, must either sink 
far below the common level of humanity, or rise 
much above it. 

The excesses of the imagination are of two kinds ; 
the first is when, within its proper sphere, it gains 
so great a, power that every other affection and mo- 
tive belonging to human nature is overborne and 
excluded. It is thus that intellectual or professional 
pursuits seems sometimes to annihilate all sympathy 
with the common interests of life, and to render 
man a mere phantom, except within the particular 
circle of his favorite objects. 

The second kind of excess (one species of which 
forms the subject of the present work) is of much 
more evil tendency, and consists in a trespass of the 



SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS. 9 

imagination upon ground where it should have little 
or no influence, and where it can only prevent or 
disturb the operation of reason and right feeling. 
Thus, not seldom, it is seen that, on the walks of 
common life, the sobrieties of good sense, and the 
counsels of experience, and the obvious motives of 
interest, and perhaps even the dictates of rectitude, 
are set at naught by some fiction of an exorbitant 
imagination, which, overstepping its proper function, 
invests even the most ordinary objects, either with 
preposterous charms or with unreal deformities. 

Very few minds seem to be altogether free from 
such constitutional errors of the intellectual sight, 
which, to a greater or less extent, intercept our 
view of things as they are. And from the same 
cause it is that we so greatly miscalculate the 
amount of happiness or of suffering that belongs to 
the lot of those around us ; which happens, not so 
much because their actual circumstances are un- 
known, as because the habitual illusions are not 
perceived by us amidst which they live. And if 
the coloring medium through which every man 
contemplates his own condition were exposed to the 
eyes of others, the victims of calamity might some- 
times be envied ; and still oftener would the favor- 
ites of fortune become the objects of pity. Or if 
every one were in a moment to be disenchanted of 
whatever is ideal in his permanent sensations, every 
one would think himself at once much less happy, 
and much more so, than he had hitherto supposed. 

The force and extravagance of the imagination is 
in some constitutions so great, that it admits of no 
1* 



10 ENTHUSIASM, 

correction from even the severest lessons of expe 
rience, much less from the advices of wisdom : the 
enthusiast passes through life in a sort of happy 
somnambulency — smiling and dreaming as he goes, 
unconscious of whatever is real, and busy with what- 
ever is fantastic : now he treads with naked foot on 
thorns ; now plunges through depths ; now verges 
the precipice, and always preserves the same impas- 
sible serenity, and displays the same reckless hardi- 
hood. 

But if the predominance of the imagination do 
not approach quite so near to the limits of insanity, 
and if it admit of correction, then the many checks 
and reverses which belong to the common course of 
human life usually fray it away from present scenes, 
and either send it back in pensive recollections of 
past pleasures, or forwards in anticipation of a bright 
futurity. The former is, of the two, the safer kind 
of constitutional error ; for as the objects upon 
which the imagination fixes its gaze, in this case, 
remain always unchanged, they impart a sort of 
tranquillity to the mind, and even favor its converse 
with wisdom ; but the visions of hope being variable, 
and altogether under the command of the inventive 
faculty, bring with them perpetual agitations, and 
continually create new excitements. Besides ; as 
these egregious hopes come in their turn to be dis- 
pelled by realities, the pensioner upon futurity lives 
amid the vexations of one who believes himself 
always plundered ; for each day as it comes robs 
him of what he had fondly called his own. Thus the 
real ills of life pierce the heart with a double edge. 



SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS. 11 

The propensity of a disordered imagination to 
find, or to create, some region of fictitious happiness, 
leads not a few to betake themselves to the fields of 
intellectual enjoyment, where they may be exempt 
from the annoyances that infest the lower world. 
Hence it is that the walks of natural philosophy or 
abstract science, and of literature, and especially of 
poetry and the fine arts, are frequented by many 
who addict themselves to pursuits of this kind, not 
so much from a genuine impulse of native genius 
or taste, as from a yearning desire to discover some 
paradise of delights, where no croaking voice of dis- 
appointment is heard, and where adversity has no 
range or leave of entrance. These intruders upon 
the realms of philosophy — these refugees from the 
vexations of common life, as they are in quest 
merely of solace and diversion, do not often become 
effective laborers in the departments upon which 
they enter : their motive possesses not the vigor 
necessary for continued and productive toil. Or if 
a degree of ambition happens to be conjoined with 
the feeble ardor of the mind, it renders them empirics 
in science, or schemers in mechanics ; or they essay 
their ineptitude upon some gaudy extravagance of 
verse or picture ; or perhaps spend their days in 
loading folios, shelves, and glass cases with curious 
lumber of whatever kind most completely unites the 
qualities of rarity and worthlessness. 

Nature has furnished each of the active faculties 
vith a sensibility to pleasure in its own exercise : 
ihis sensibility is the spring of spontaneous exertion ; 
and if the intellectual constitution be robust, it 



12 ENTHUSIASM, 

serves to stimulate labor, and yet itself observes a 
modest sobriety, leaving the forces of the mind to do 
their part without embarrassment. The pleasurable 
emotion is always subordinate and subservient, never 
predominant or importunate. But in minds of a less 
healthy temperament, the emotion of pleasure, and 
the consequent excitement, is disproportionate to the 
strength of the faculties. The efficient power of the 
understanding is therefore overborne, and left in the 
rear ; there is more of commotion than of action ; 
more of movement than of progress ; more of enter- 
prise than of achievement. 

Such, then, are those who, in due regard both to 
the essential differences of character, and to the pro- 
prieties of language, should be termed Enthusiasts. 
To apply an epithet which carries with it an idea 
of folly, of weakness, and of extravagance, to a vig- 
orous mind, efficiently as well as ardently engaged 
in the pursuit of any substantial and important ob- 
ject, is not merely to misuse a word, but to intro- 
duce confusion among our notions, and to put con- 
tempt upon what is deserving of respect. Where 
there is no error of imagination, no misjudging of 
realities, no calculation which reason condemns, 
there is no enthusiasm, even though the soul may 
be on fire with the velocity of its movement in pur- 
suit of its chosen object. If once we abandon this 
distinction, language will want a term for a well- 
known and very common vice of the mind ; and, 
from a wasteful perversion of phrases, we must be 
reduced to speak of qualities most noble and most 



SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS. 13 

infirm by the very same designation. If the objects 
which excite the ardor of the mind are substantial, 
and if the mode of pursuit be truly conducive to 
their attainment ; if, in a word, all be real and genu- 
ine, then it is not one degree more, or even many 
degrees more, of intensity of feeling that can alter 
the character of the emotion. Enthusiasm is not a 
term of measurement, but of quality. 

When it is said that enthusiasm is the fault of 
infirm constitutions, a seeming exception must be 
made in behalf of a few high- tempered spirits, distin- 
guished by their indefatigable energy, and destined 
to achieve arduous and hazardous enterprises. That 
such spirits often exhibit the characters of enthu- 
siasm cannot be denied ; for the imagination spurns 
restraint, and rejects all the sober measurements and 
calculations of reason, whenever its chosen object 
is in view ; and a tinge, often more than a tinge, of 
extravagance belongs to every word and action. 
And yet the exception is only apparent ; for although 
these giants of human nature greatly surpass other 
men in force of mind, courage, and activity, still the 
heroic extravagance, and the irregular and ungovern- 
able power which enables them to dare and to do 
so much, is, in fact, nothing more than a partial ac- 
cumulation of strength, necessary because the ut- 
most energies of human nature are so small, that, if 
equally distributed through the system, they would 
be inadequate to arduous labors. The very same 
task, which the human hero achieves in the fury and 
fever of a half-mad enthusiasm, would be performed 
by a seraph in the perfect serenity of reason. Al- 



14 ENTHUSIASM, 

though, therefore, these vigorous minds are strong 
when placed in comparison with others, their enthu- 
siasm is in itself a weakness ; — a weakness of the 
species, if not of the individual. 

Unless a perpetual miracle were to intercept the 
natural operation of common causes, religion, not 
less than philosophy or poetry, will draw enthusiasts 
within its precincts. Nor, if we recollect on the 
one hand the fitness of the vast objects revealed in 
the Scriptures to affect the imagination, and on the 
other, the wide diffusion of religious ideas, can it 
seem strange if it be found, in fact, that religious 
enthusiasts outnumber any other class. It is also 
quite natural that enthusiastic and genuine religious 
emotions should be intermingled with peculiar intri- 
cacy ; since the revelations which give them scope 
combine, in a peculiar manner, elements of grandeur, 
of power, and of sublimity (fitted to kindle the ima- 
gination), with those ideas that furnish excitement 
to the moral sentiments. 

The religion of the heart, it is manifest, may be 
supplanted by a religion of the imagination, just in 
the same way that the social affections are often 
dislodged or corrupted by factitious sensibilities. 
Every one knows that an artificial excitement of 
the kind and tender emotions of our nature may 
take place through the medium of the imagination. 
Hence the power of poetry and the drama. But 
every one must also know that these feelings, how 
vivid soever and seemingly pure and salutary they 
may be, and however nearly they may resemble the 



SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS. 15 

genuine workings of the soul, are so far from pro- 
ducing the same softening effect upon the character, 
that they tend rather to indurate the heart. When- 
ever excitements of any kind are regarded distinctly 
as a source of luxurious pleasure, then, instead of 
expanding the bosom with beneficent energy, instead 
of dispelling the sinister purposes of selfishness, in- 
stead of shedding the softness and warmth of gene- 
rous love through the moral system, they become a 
freezing centre of solitary and unsocial indulgence ; 
and at length displace every emotion that deserves 
to be called virtuous. No cloak of selfishness is, in 
fact, more impenetrable than that which usually en- 
velops a pampered imagination. The reality of woe 
is the very circumstance that paralyses sympathy ; 
and the eye that can pour forth its flood of commis- 
eration for the sorrows of the romance or the drama, 
grudges a tear to the substantial wretchedness of the 
unhappy. Much more often than not, this kind of 
luxurious sensitiveness to fiction is conjoined with a 
callousness that enables the subject of it to pass 
through the affecting occasions of domestic life in 
immovable apathy : — the heart has become, like that 
of leviathan, " firm as a stone, yea, hard as a piece 
of the nether millstone." 

This process of perversion and of induration may 
as readily have place among the religious emotions 
as among those of any other class ; for the laws of 
human nature are uniform, whatever may be the 
immediate cause which puts them in action ; and a 
fictitious piety corrupts or petrifies the heart not less 
certainly than does a romantic sentimentality. The 



16 ENTHUSIASM, 

danger attending enthusiasm in religion is not, then, 
of a trivial sort; and whoever disaffects the sub- 
stantial matters of Christianity, and seeks to derive 
from it merely, or chiefly, the gratifications of ex- 
cited feeling ; whoever combines from its materials 
a paradise of abstract contemplation, or of poetic 
imagery, where he may take refuge from the annoy- 
ances and the importunate claims of common life ; 
whoever thus delights himself with dreams, and is 
insensible to realities, lives in peril of awaking from 
his illusions when truth comes too late. The relig- 
ious idealist sincerely believes himself, perhaps, to 
be eminently devout ; and those who witness his ab- 
straction, his elevation, his enjoyments, may rever- 
ence his piety ; meanwhile, this fictitious happiness 
creeps as a lethargy through the moral system, and 
is rendering him, continually, less and less suscepti- 
ble of those emotions in which true religion consists. 
Nor is this always the limit of the evil ; for though 
religious enthusiasm may sometimes seem a harmless 
delusion, compatible with amiable feelings and vir- 
tuous conduct, it more often allies itself with the 
malign passions, and then produces the virulent mis- 
chiefs of fanaticism. Opportunity may be wanting, 
and habit may be wanting, but intrinsic qualification 
for the perpetration of the worst crimes is not want- 
ing to the man whose bosom heaves with religious 
enthusiasm, inflamed by malignancy. If checks are 
removed, if incitements are presented, if the mo- 
mentum of action and custom is acquired, he will 
soon learn to contemn every emotion of kindness or 
of pity, as if it were a treason against heaven, and 



SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS. 17 

will make it his ambition to rival the achievements, 
not of heroes, but of fiends. The amenities that 
have been diffused through society in modern times 
forbid the overt acts and excesses of fanatical feel- 
ing ; but the venom still lurks in the vicinity of 
enthusiasm, and may be quickened in a moment 
meantime, while smothered and repressed, it gives 
edge and spirit to those hundred religious differences 
which are still the opprobrium of Christianity. 
Whoever, then, admits into his bosom the artificial 
fire of an imaginative piety, ought first to assure 
himself that his heart harbors no particle of the 
poison of ill-will. 

The reproach so eagerly propagated by those who 
make no religious pretensions, against those who do 
— that their godliness serves them as a cloak of im- 
morality, is, to a great extent, calumnious : it is also, 
in some measure, founded upon facts, which, though 
misunderstood and exaggerated, give color to the 
charge. When professors of religion are suddenly 
found to be wanting in common integrity, or in per- 
sonal virtue, no other supposition is admitted by the 
world than that the delinquent was always a hypo- 
crite ; and this supposition is, no doubt, sometimes 
not erroneous. But much more often his fall has 
surprised himself not less than others ; and is, in 
fact, nothing more than the natural issue of a ficti- 
tious piety, which, though it might hold itself entire 
under ordinary circumstances, gave w T ay necessarily 
in the hour of unusual trial. An artificial religion 
not only fails to impart to the mind the vigor and 



18 ENTHUSIASM, 

consistency of true virtue, but withdraws atte> 'uca 
from those common principles of honor and integ- 
rity which carry worldly men with credit through 
difficult occasions. The enthusiast is, therefore, of 
all men, the one who is the worst prepared to with- 
stand peculiar seductions. He possesses neither the 
heavenly armor of virtue, nor the earthly. 

It were an affront to reason, as well as to theology, 
to suppose that true and universal virtue can rest on 
any other foundation than the fear and love of God. 
The enthusiast, therefore, whose piety is fictitious, 
has only a choice of immoralities, to be determined 
by his temperament and circumstances. He may 
become, perhaps, nothing worse than a recluse — an 
indolent contemplatist, and intellectual voluptuary, 
shut up from his fellows in the circle of profitless 
spiritual delights and conflicts. The times are, in- 
deed, gone by when persons of this class might, in 
contempt of their species, and in idolatry of them- 
selves, withdraw to dens, and hold society only with 
bats, and make the supreme wisdom to consist in the 
possession of a long beard, a filthy blanket, and a 
taste for raw herbs : but the same tastes, animated 
by the same principles, fail not still to find place of 
indulgence, even amid the crowds of a city : and 
the recluse who lives in the world will probably be 
more sour in temper than the anchoret of the wil- 
derness. An ardent temperament converts the en- 
thusiast into a zealot, who, while he is laborious in 
winning proselytes, discharges common duties very 
remissly, and is found to be a more punctilious ob- 
server of his creed than of his word. Or, if his 



SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS. 19 

imagination be fertile, he becomes a visionary, who 
lives on better terms with angels and with seraphs 
than with his children, servants, and neighbors : 
or he is one who, while he reverences the " thrones, 
dominions, and powers" of the invisible world, vents 
his spleen in railing at all " dignities and powers" 
of earth. 

Superstition — the creature of guilt and fear — is an 
evil almost as ancient as the human family. But 
Enthusiasm — the child of hope — hardly appeared on 
earth until after the time when life and immortality 
had been brought to light by Christianity. Hitherto, 
a cloud of the thickest gloom had stretched itself out 
before the eye of man as he trod the sad path to the 
grave ; and though poetry supplied its fictions, and 
philosophy its surmises, the one possessed little 
force, and the other could claim no authentication ; 
neither, therefore, had power to awaken the soul. 
But the Christian revelation not only shed a sudden 
splendor upon the awful futurity, but brought its 
revelations to bear upon the minds of men, with all 
the pressure and intensity of palpable facts. The 
long slumbering sentiment of immortal hope — a 
sentiment natural to the human constitution, and 
chief among its passions — instead of being deluded, 
as heretofore, by dreams, was thoroughly aroused by 
the hand and voice of reality ; and human nature 
exhibited a new development of the higher faculties. 
When therefore, in the second century of the Chris- 
tian era, various and vigorous forms of an enthusi- 
asm, such as the world had hitherto never known, 
are seen to start forth on the stage of history, we 



20 ENTHUSIASM, 

behold the indications of the presence of Truth, giv- 
ing an impulse to the human mind both for the better 
and the worse, which no fictions of sages or poets 
had ever imparted. 

In proportion as the influence of scriptural re- 
ligion faded, the elder and the younger vice — Super- 
stition and Enthusiasm, joined their forces to deform 
every principle and practice of Christianity, and in 
the course of four or five centuries, under their 
united operations, a faint semblance only of its pri- 
meval beauty survived ; another period of five 
hundred years saw Superstition prevail, almost to 
the extinction, not only of true religion, but of 
Enthusiasm also ; and mankind fell back into a gloom 
as thick as that of the ancient polytheism. But at 
length the breath of life returned to the prostrate 
church, and the accumulated and consolidated evils 
of many ages were thrown off in a day. Yet as 
Superstition more than Enthusiasm had spoiled 
Christianity, she chiefly was recognized as the 
enemy of religion ; and the latter, rather than the 
former, was allowed to hold a place in the sanctuary 
after its cleansing. Since that happy period of re- 
freshment and renovation, both vices have had their 
seasons of recovered influence ; but both have been 
held in check, and their prevalence prevented. 
At the present time (1828) — we speak of protestant 
Christendom — the power of superstition is exceed- 
ingly small ; for the diffusion of general knowledge, 
and the prevalence of true religion, and not less the 
influence of the infidel spirit, forbid the advances of 
an error which must always lean for support on 



SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS. 21 

ignorance and fear. Nor, on the other hand, can it 
be fairly affirmed that ours is eminently or conspic- 
uously an age of religious enthusiasm. Yet, as there 
are superstitions which still maintain a feeble exist- 
ence under favor of the respect naturally paid to 
antiquity, so are there also among us enthusiastic 
principles and practices, which, having been gener- 
ated in a period of greater excitement than our 
own, are preserved as they were received from the 
fathers ; and seem to be in safe course of transmis- 
sion to the next generation. 

But even if it should appear that — excepting 
individual instances of constitutional extravagance, 
which it would be absurd, because useless, to make 
the subject of serious animadversion — enthusiasm is 
not now justly chargeable upon any body of Chris- 
tians, there would still be a very sufficient reason 
for attempting to fix the true import of the term, so 
long as it is vaguely and contumeliously applied by 
many to every degree of fervor in religion which 
seems tocondemn their own indifference. Not, in- 
deed, as if there were ground to hope that even the 
most exact and unexceptionable analysis, or the 
clearest definitions, would ever avail so to distinguish 
genuine from spurious piety as should compel irre- 
ligious men to acknowledge that the difference is 
real ; for such persons feel it to be indispensable to 
the slumber of conscience to confound the one with 
the other ; and although a thousand times refuted, 
they will again, when pressed by truth and reason, 
run to the old and crazy sophism which pretend? 



22 ENTHUSIASM, 

that, because Christianity is sometimes disfigured by 
enthusiasts and fanatics, therefore there is neither 
retribution nor immortality for man. It is the in- 
fatuation of persons of a certain character, to live 
always at variance witkwisdom, on account of other 
men's follies ; and this is the deplorable error of those 
who will see nothing in religion but its corruptions. 
Nevertheless Truth owes always a vindication of 
herself to her friends, if not to her enemies ; and 
her sincere friends will not wish to screen their own 
errors, when this vindication requires them to be 
exposed. 

If, as is implied in some common modes of speak- 
ing, enthusiasm were only an error in degree, or a 
mere fault by excess, then the attempt to establish 
a definite distinction between what is blameworthy 
and what is commendable in the religious affections 
— between the maximum and mininum of emotion 
which sobriety approves, must be both hopeless and 
fruitless ; inasmuch as we should need a scale 
adapted to every man's constitution ; for the very 
same amount of fervor which may be only natural 
and proper to one mind, could not be attained by 
another without delirium or insanity. If this notion 
were just, every one would be entitled to repel the 
charge of either apathy or enthusiasm ; and while 
one might maintain, that if he were to admit into 
his bosom a single degree more of religious fervor 
than he actually feels, he should become an en- 
thusiast, another might offer an equally reasonable 
apology for the wildest extravagances. At this 



SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS. 23 

rate the real offenders against sober piety could 
never be convicted of their fault ; and in allowing 
such a principle we should only authenticate the 
scorn with which indifference loves to look upon 
sincerity. 

That the error of the enthusiast does not consist 
in an excess merely of the religious emotions, might 
be argued conclusively on the ground that the Scrip- 
tures, our only safe guide on such points, while 
they are replete with the language of impassioned 
devotion, and while they contain a multitude of 
urgent and explicit exhortations, tending to stimulate 
the fervency of prayer, offer no cautions against 
any such supposed excesses of piety. 

But, as matter of fact, nothing is more common 
than to meet with religionists whose opinions and 
language are manifestly deformed by enthusiasm, 
while their devotional feelings are barely tepid : 
languor, relaxation, apathy, not less than extrava- 
gance, characterize their style of piety ; and it were 
quite a ludicrous mistake to warn such persons of 
the danger of being " religious overmuch." Yet it 
must be granted that those extremes, in matters of 
opinion or practice, which sometimes render even 
torpor conspicuous by its absurdities, have always 
originated with minds susceptible of high excite- 
ment. Enthusiasm, in a concrete form, is the child 
of vivacious temperaments ; but when once pro- 
duced, it spreads almost as readily through inert, 
as through active masses, and shows itself to be 
altogether separable from the ardor or turbulence 
whence it sprang. 



24 ENTHUSIASM, 

To depict the character of those who are enthu- 
siasts by physical temperament is then a matter 
of much less importance than to define the errors 
which such persons propagate ; for, in the first place, 
the originators of enthusiasm are few, and the 
parties infected by it many ; and, in the second, the 
evil with the latter is incidental, and therefore may 
be remedied ; while with the former, as it is con- 
stitutional, it is hardly in any degree susceptible of 
correction. 

The examination of a few principal points will 
make it evident that a very intelligible distinction 
may, without difficulty, be established between what 
is genuine and what is spurious in religious feeling ; 
and when an object so important is before us, we 
ought not to heed the injudicious, and perhaps 
sinister, delicacy of some persons who had rather 
that truth should remain forever sullied by corrup- 
tions, and exposed to the contempt of worldlings, 
than that themselves should be disturbed in their 
narrow and long-cherished modes of thinking. And 
yet there may be some lesser misconceptions, per- 
haps, which it will be more wise to leave untouched 
than to attempt to correct them at the cost of break- 
ing up habits of thought and modes of speaking 
connected indissolubly with truths of vital impor- 
tance. It should also be granted, that, when those 
explanations or illustrations of momentous doctrines 
which an exposure of the error of the enthusiast may 
lead us to propound seem at all to endanger the 
simplicity of our reliance upon the inartificial de- 
clarations of Scripture, they are much better aban- 



SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS. 25 

doned at once, although in themselves, perhaps, 
justifiable, than maintained ; if in doing so we are 
seduced from the direct light of revelation into the 
dim regions of philosophical abstraction. 

Christianity has in some short periods of its his- 
tory been entirely dissociated from philosophical 
modes of thought and expression ; and assuredly it 
has prospered in such periods. At other times it 
has scarcely been seen at all, except in the garb 
of metaphysical discussion, and then it has lost all 
its vigor and glory. In the present state of the 
world the primitive insulation of religious truth 
from the philosophical style is scarcely practicable ; 
nor indeed does it seem so desirable while, happily, 
we are in no danger of seeing the light of revelation 
again immured in colleges. But although it is inev- 
itable, and perhaps not to be regretted, that religious 
subjects, both doctrinal and practical, should, espe- 
cially in books, admit such generalities, every sober- 
minded writer will remember that it is not by an 
intrinsic and permanent necessity, but by a tempo- 
rary concession to the spirit of the age, that this 
style is used and allowed. He will moreover bear 
in mind that the concession leans towards a side of 
danger, and will therefore always hold himself 
ready to break off from even the most pleasing or 
plausible speculation when his Christian instincts, 
if the phrase may be permitted, give him warning 
that he is going remote from the vital atmosphere 
of scriptural truth. Whatever is practically impor- 
tant in religion or morals, may at all times be ad- 
vanced and argued in the simplest terms of colloquial 
2 



26 ENTHUSIASM, SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS. 

expression. From the pulpit, perhaps, no other style 
should at any time be heard ; for the pulpit belongs 
to the poor and to the uninstructed. But the press 
is not bound by the same conditions, for it is an in- 
strument of knowledge foreign to the authenticated 
means of Christian instruction. A writer and a 
layman is no recognized functionary in the Church ; 
he may, therefore, choose his style without violating 
any rules or proprieties of office. 



SECTION II. 

ENTHUSIASM IN DEVOTION. 

The most formal and lifeless devotions, not less 
than the most fervent, are mere enthusiasm, unless 
it can be ascertained, on satisfactory grounds, that 
such exercises are indeed efficient means for pro- 
moting our welfare. Prayer is impiety, and praise a 
folly, if the one be not a real instrument of obtaining 
important benefits, and the other an authorized and 
acceptable offering to the Giver of all good. But 
when once these points are determined, and they 
are necessarily involved in the truth of Christianity, 
then, whatever improprieties may be chargeable 
upon the devout, an error of incomparably greater 
magnitude rests with the undevout. To err in 
modes of prayer, may be reprehensible ; but not to 
pray, is mad. And w T hen those whose temper is 
abhorrent to religious services animadvert sarcasti- 
cally upon the follies, real or supposed, of religionists 
there is a sad inconsistency in such criticisms, like 
that which is seen when the insane make ghastly 
mirth of the manners or personal defects of their 
friends and keepers. 

The doctrine of immortality, as revealed in the 



28 ENTHUSIASM IN DEVOTION. 

Scriptures, gives at once reason and force to de- 
votion ; for if the interests of the present life only, 
in which " one event happeneth to the just and to 
the unjust," were taken into calculation, the utility 
of prayer could scarcely be proved, and never be 
made conspicuous, at least not to the profane. As 
a matter of feeling, it is the expectation of a more 
direct and sensible intercouse with the Supreme 
Being in a future life, that imparts depth and energy 
to the sentiments which fill the mind in its ap- 
proaches to the throne of the heavenly majesty. 
But the man of earth who thinks himself rich when 
he has enjoyed the delights of seventy summers, and 
who deems the hope of eternity to be of less value 
than an hour of riotous sensuality, can never desire 
to penetrate the veil of second causes, or to " find 
out the Almighty." Glad to snatch the boons of the 
present life, he covets no knowledge of the Giver. 

Not so those into whose hearts the belief of a 
future life — of such a future life as Christianity de- 
picts — has entered. They feel that the promised 
bliss cannot possibly spring from an atheistic satiety 
of animal or even of intellectual pleasures ; but that 
the substance of it must consist in communion with 
him who is the source and centre of good. This 
belief and expectation sheds vigor through the soul 
while engaged in exercises of devotion ; for such 
employments are known to be the preparatives, and 
the foretastes, and the earnests, of the expected 
"fulness of joy." The only idea which the human 
mind, under its present limitations, can form of a 
Dure and perpetual felicity, free from all elements 



ENTHUSIASM IN DEVOTION. 29 

of decay and corruption, is that which it gathers 
and compounds from devotional sentiments. In 
cherishing and expressing these sentiments, it grasps, 
therefore, the substance of immortal delights, and, 
by an affinity of the heart, holds fast the unutterable 
hope set forth in the Scriptures. The Scriptures 
being admitted as the word of God, this intensity 
of devotional feelings is exempted from blame or 
suspicion ; nor can it ever be shown that the very 
highest pitch of such feelings is in itself excessive or 
unreasonable. The mischiefs of enthusiasm arise, 
not from the force or fervor, but from the perver- 
sion of the religious affections. 

The very idea of addressing petitions to him 
who " worketh all things" according to the counsel 
of his own eternal and unalterable will, and the 
enjoined practice of clothing sentiments of piety in 
articulate forms of language, though these senti- 
ments, before they are invested in words, are per- 
fectly known to the Searcher of hearts, imply that, 
in the terms and the mode of intercourse between 
Qod and man, no attempt is made to lift the latter 
above his sphere of limited notions and imperfect 
knowledge. The terms of devotional communion 
rest even on a much lower ground than that which 
man, by efforts of reason and imagination, would 
fain attain to. Prayer, in its very conditions, sup- 
poses, not only a condescension of the divine nature 
to meet the human, but a humbling of the human 
nature to a lower range than it might reach. But 
the region of abstract conceptions, of lofty reason- 
ings, of magnificent images, has an atmosphere too 



30 ENTHUSIASM IN DEVOTION. 

subtile to support the health of true piety ; and in 
order that the warmth and vigor of life may be 
maintained in the heart, the common level of the 
natural affections is chosen as the scene of inter- 
course between heaven and earth. In accordance 
with this plan of devotion, not only does the Su- 
preme conceal himself from our senses, but he re- 
veals in his word barely a glimpse of his essential 
glories. By some naked affirmations we are indeed 
secured against false and grovelling notions of the 
divine nature ; but these hints are incidental, and 
so scanty that every excursive mind goes beyond 
them in its conceptions of the infinite attributes. 

Nor is it only the brightness of the eternal throne 
that is shrouded from the view of those who are in- 
vited to draw near to him that " sitteth thereon ;" 
for the immeasurable distance that separates man 
from his Maker is carefully veiled by the conceal- 
ment of the intervening orders of rational beings. 
Although the fact of such superior existences is 
clearly affirmed, nothing more than the bare fact is 
imparted : nor can we misunderstand the reason and 
necessity of so much reserve ; for without it, those 
free and kindly movements of the heart in which 
genuine devotion consists, would be overborne by 
impressions of a kind that belong to the imagination. 
Distance is known and measured only by the per- 
ception of intermediate objects. The traveller who, 
with weary steps, has passed from one extremity to 
the other of a continent, and whose memory is 
fraught with the recollection of the various scenes 
of the journey, is qualified to attach a distinct idea 



ENTHUSIASM IN DEVOTION. 31 

to the higher terms of measurement ; but the notion 
of extended space formed by those who have never 
passed the boundary of their native province is 
vague and unreal. Such are the notions which, 
with all the aids of astronomy and arithmetic, we 
form of the distances even of the nearest of the 
heavenly bodies. But if the traveller who has ac- 
tually looked upon the ten thousand successive land- 
scapes that lie between the farthest west and the 
remotest east could, with a sustained effort of mem- 
ory and imagination, hold all those scenes in recol- 
lection, and repeat the voluminous idea with distinct 
reiteration until the millions of millions were num- 
bered that separate sun from sun ; and if the notion 
thus laboriously obtained could be vividly sup- 
ported and transferred to the pathless spaces of 
the universe, then that prospect of distant systems 
which night opens before us, instead of exciting 
mild and pleasurable emotions of admiration, would 
rather oppress the imagination under a painful sense 
of the so measured interval. If the eye, when it 
fixes its gaze upon the vault of heaven, could see, 
in fancy, a causeway arched across the void, and 
bordered in long series with the hills and plains of 
an earthly journey — repeated ten thousand and ten 
thousand times, until ages were spent in the pil- 
grimage, then would he who possessed such a power 
of vision hide himself in caverns rather than ven- 
ture to look up to the terrible magnitude of the 
starry skies, thus set out in parts before him. 

And yet the utmost distances of the material uni 
verse are finite ; but the disparity of nature which 



32 ENTHUSIASM IN DEVOTION. 

separates man fro in his Maker is infinite ; nor can 
the interval be filled up or brought under any pro- 
cess of measurement. Nevertheless, in the view of 
our feeble conceptions, an apparent measurement or 
filling up of the infinite void would take place, and 
so the idea of immense separation would be painfully 
enhanced if distinct vision were obtained of the 
towering hierarchy of intelligences at the basement 
of which the human system is founded. Were it 
indeed permitted to man to gaze upward from step 
to step, and from range to range of the vast edifice 
of rational existences, and could his eye attain its 
summit, and then perceive, at an infinite height be- 
yond- that highest platform of created beings, the 
lowest beams of the eternal throne, what liberty of 
heart would afterwards be left to him in drawing 
near to the Father of spirits ? How, after such a 
revelation of the upper world, could the affectionate 
cheerfulness of earthly worship again take place ? 
Or how, while contemplating the measured vastness 
of the interval between heaven and earth, could the 
dwellers thereon come familiarly, as before, to the 
Hearer of prayer, bringing with them the small re- 
quests of their petty interests of the present life ? If 
introduction were had to the society of those beings 
whose wisdom has accumulated during ages which 
time forgets to number, and who have lived to see, 
once and again, the mystery of the providence of 
God complete its cycles, would not the impression 
of created superiority oppress the spirit, and ob- 
struct its access to the Being whose excellences arr 
absolute and infinite ? Or what would be the fee* 



ENTHUSIASM IN DEVOTION. 33 

ings of the infirm child of earth, if, when about to 
present his supplications, he found himself standing 
in the theatre of heaven, and saw, ranged in a circle 
wider than the skies, the congregation of immortals ? 
These spectacles of greatness, if laid open to per- 
ception, would present such an interminable per- 
spective of glory, and so set out the immeasurable 
distance between ourselves and the Supreme Being 
with a long gradation of splendors, that we should 
henceforward feel as if thrust down to an extreme 
remoteness from the Divine notice ; and it would 
be hard, or impossible, to retain, with any comforta- 
ble conviction, the belief in the nearness of him 
who is revealed as " a very present help in every 
time of trouble." But that our feeble spirits may 
not thus be overborne, or our faith and confidence 
baffled and perplexed, the Most High hides from our 
sight the ministries of his court, and, dismissing his 
train, visits with infinite condescension the lowly 
abodes of those who fear him, and dwells as a Fa- 
ther in the homes of earth. 

Every ambitious attempt to break through the 
humbling conditions on which man may hold com- 
munion with God, must then fail of success ; since 
the Supreme has fixed the scene of worship and 
converse, not in the skies, but on earth. The 
Scripture models of devotion, far from encouraging 
vague and inarticulate contemplations, consist of 
such utterances of desire, or hope, or love, as seem 
to suppose the existence of correlative feelings, and 
indeed of every human sympathy in him to whom 
they are addressed. And although reason and 
2* 



34 ENTHUSIASM IN DEVOTION. 

Scripture assure us that he neither needs to be 
informed of our wants, nor waits to be moved by 
our supplications, yet will he be approached wifh 
the eloquence of importunate desire, and he de- 
mands, not only a sincere feeling of indigence and 
dependence, but an undissembled zeal and diligence 
in seeking the desired boons by persevering request. 
He is to be supplicated with arguments, as one who 
needs to be swayed and moved, to be wrought upon 
and influenced; nor is any alternative offered -to 
those who would present themselves at the throne 
of heavenly grace, or any exception made in favor 
of superior spirits, whose more elevated notions of 
the divine perfections may render this accommo- 
dated style distasteful. As the hearer of prayer 
stoops to listen, so also must the suppliant stoop 
from the heights of philosophical or meditative 
abstraction, and either come in genuine simplicity of 
petition, as a son to a father, or be utterly excluded 
from the friendship of his Maker. 

This scriptural system of devotion stands opposed, 
then, to all those false sublimities of an enthusiastic 
pietism which affect to lift man into a middle region 
between heaven and earth, ere he may think himself 
admitted to hold communion with God. While the 
inflated devotee is soaring into he knows not what 
vagueness of upper space, he " whom the heaven 
of heavens cannot contain," has come down, and, 
with benign condescension, has placed himself in the 
centre of the little circle of human ideas and affec- 
tions. The man of imaginative, or of hyper-rational 
piety, is gone in contemplation where God is not ; 



ENTHUSIASM IN DEVOTION. 35 

or where man shall never meet him : for " the high 
and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name 
is holy, and who dwelleth in the high and holy 
place," when he invites us to his friendship, holds 
the splendor of his natural perfections in abeyance, 
and proclaims that " he dwells with the man who is 
of a humble and contrite spirit, to revive the spirit 
of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite 
ones." Thus does the piety taught in the Scriptures 
make provision against the vain exaggerations of 
enthusiasm ; and thus does it give free play to the 
affections of the heart ; while whatever might stim- 
ulate the imagination is enveloped in the thickest 
covering of obscurity. 

The outward forms and observances of worship 
are manifestly intended to discourage and exclude 
the false refinements of an imaginative piety, and 
to give to the religious affections a mundane, rather 
than a transcendental character. The congregated 
worshippers come into u the house of God," the hall 
or court of audience, on the intelligible terms of 
human association ; and they come by explicit in- 
vitation from him who declares that " wheresoever 
two or three are gathered together in his name, there 
he is" to meet them. And being so assembled, as 
in the actual presence of the il King of saints" they 
give utterance to the emotions of love, veneration, 
hope, joy, penitence, in all those modes of outward 
expression which are at once proper to the consti- 
tution of human nature and proper to be addressed 
to a being of kindred character and sympathies. 
Worship is planned altogether in adaptation to the 



36 ENTHUSIASM IN DEVOTION. 

limitations of the inferior party, not in proportion 
to the infinitude of the superior ; even the worship 
of heaven must be framed on the same principle ; 
for how high soever we ascend in the scale of created 
intelligence, still the finite can never surmount its 
boundaries, or at all adapt itself to the infinite. But 
the infinite may always bow to the finite. Those, 
therefore, who, inflated by enthusiasm, contemn or 
neglect the modes and style of worship proper to 
humanity, must find that, though indulgence should 
be given to their affectation on earth, no room can 
be allowed it in heaven. 

The dispensations of the divine providence towards 
the pious have all the same tendency to confine the 
devout affections within the circle of terrestrial ideas, 
and to make religion an occupant of the homestead 
of common feelings. " Many are the afflictions of 
the righteous," and wherefore, but to bring his relig- 
ious belief and emotions into close contact with the 
humiliations of the natural life, and to necessitate 
the use of prayer as a real and efficient means of 
obtaining needful assistance in distress ? If vague 
speculations or delicious illusions have carried the 
Christian away from the realities of earth, some ur- 
gent want or piercing sorrow presently arouses him 
from his dreams and obliges him to come back to 
importunate prayer ' and to unaffected praise. A 
strange incongruity may seem to present itself, when 
the sons of God — the heirs of immortality, the des- 
tined princes of heaven — are seen to be implicated in 
sordid cares, and vexed and oppressed by the per- 



ENTHUSIASM IN DEVOTION. 37 

plexities of a moment ; but this incongruity strikes 
us only when the great facts of religion are viewed 
in the false light of the imagination ; for the process 
of preparation, far from being incompatible with 
these apparent degradations, requires them ; and it is 
by such means of humiliation that the hope of immor- 
tality, confined within the heart, is prevented from 
floating in the region of material images. 

We have said that when an important object is 
zealously pursued in the use of means proper for its 
attainment, a mere intensity or fervor of feeling 
does not constitute enthusiasm. If, therefore, prayer 
has a lawful object, whether it be temporal or 
spiritual, and is used in humble confidence of its 
efficiency, as a means of obtaining the desired boon 
or some equivalent blessing, there is nothing unreal 
in the employment ; and therefore nothing enthu- 
siastic. But there are devotional exercises, which, 
though they assume the style and phrases of prayer, 
appear to have no other object than to attain the 
immediate pleasures of excitement. The devotee is 
not in truth a petitioner ; for his prayers terminate 
in themselves ; and when he reaches the expected 
pitch of transient emotion, he desires nothing more. 
This appetite for feverish agitations naturally prompts 
a quest of whatever is exorbitant in expression or 
sentiment, and as naturally inspires a dread of all 
those subjects of meditation which tend to abate the 
pulse of the moral system. If the language of hu- 
miliation is at all admitted into the enthusiast's devo- 
tions, it must be so pointed with extravagance, and 



38 ENTHUSIASM IN DEVOTION. 

so swollen with exaggerations, that it serves much 
more to tickle the fancy than to affect the heart : it 
is a burlesque of penitence very proper to amuse a 
mind that is destitute of real contrition. Thai 
such artificial humiliations do not spring from the 
sorrow of repentance, is proved by their bringing 
with them no lowliness of temper. Genuine humil- 
ity would shake the towering structure of this en- 
thusiastic pietism ; and, therefore, in the place of 
Christian humbleness of mind, there are cherished 
certain ineffable notions of self-annihilation, and self- 
renunciation, and we know not what other attempts 
at metaphysical suicide. If you will receive the 
enthusiast's description of himself, he has become, 
in his own esteem, by continued force of divine con- 
templation, infinitely less than an atom — a mere 
negative quantity — an incalculable fraction of posi- 
tive entity ! meanwhile the whole of his deportment 
betrays a self-importance that might be ample enough 
for a god. 

Minds of superior order, and when refined by 
culture, may be full fraught with enthusiasm with- 
out exhibiting any very reprehensible extravagances ; 
for taste and intelligence avail to conceal the offen- 
siveness of error, as well as of vice. But it will not 
be so with the gross and the uneducated. These, 
if they are taught to neglect the substantial purposes 
of prayer, and are encouraged to seek chiefly the 
gratifications of excitement, will hardly refrain from 
the utterance of discontent, when they fail of success. 
Whatever physical or accidental cause may oppress 
the animal spirits, and so frustrate the attempt to 



ENTHUSIASM IN DEVOTION. 39 

reach the desired pitch of emotion, gives occasion 
to some sort of querulous altercation with the Su- 
preme Being ; or to some disguised imputation of 
caprice on the part of Him who is supposed to have 
withheld the expected spiritual influence. Thus the 
divine condescension in holding intercourse with 
man on the level of friendship, is abused in this wan- 
tonness of irreverence ; and the very same temper 
which impels a man of vulgar manners, when disap- 
pointed in his suit, to turn upon his superior with 
the language of rude opprobrium, is, in its degree, 
indulged towards the Majesty of heaven. " Thou 
thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thy- 
self," is a rebuke which belongs to those who thus 
affront the Most High with the familiarities of com- 
mon companionship. We say not that flagrant 
abuses of this kind are of frequent occurrence, even 
among the uneducated ; yet neither are they quite 
unknown. A perceptible tendency towards them 
always accompanies the enthusiastic notion that the 
principal part of piety is excitement. 

The substitution of the transient and unreal, for 
the real and enduring objects of prayer, brings with 
it often that sort of ameliorated mysticism which 
consists in a solicitous dissection of the changing 
emotions of the religious life, and in a sickly sen- 
sitiveness, serving only to divert attention from 
what is important in practical virtue. There are 
anatomists of piety who destroy all the freshness and 
vigor of faith, and hope, and charity, by immuring 
themselves night and day in the infected atmos- 



40 ENTHUSIASM IN DEVOTION. 

phere of their own bosoms. But now let a man of 
warm heart, who is happily surrounded with the 
dear objects of the social affections, try the effect of 
a parallel practice ; let him institute anxious scru- 
tinies of his feelings towards those whom, hitherto, 
he has believed himself to regard with unfeigned 
love ; let him in these inquiries have recourse to all 
the fine distinctions of a casuist, and use all the pro- 
found analyses of a metaphysician, and spend hours 
daily in pulling asunder every complex emotion of 
tenderness that has given grace to the domestic life ; 
and, moreover, let him journalize these examinations, 
and note particularly, and with the scrupulosity of 
an accomptant, how much of the mass of his kindly 
sentiments he has ascertained to consist of genuine 
love, and how much was selfishness in disguise; and 
let him from time to time solemnly resolve to be, 
in future, more disinterested, and less hypocritical in 
his affections towards his family ! What, at the end 
of a year, would be the result of such a process ? 
What, but a wretched debility and dejection of the 
heart, and a strangeness and a sadness of the man- 
ners, and a suspension of the native expressions and 
ready offices of zealous affection ? Meanwhile the 
hesitations, and the musings, and the upbraidings of 
an introverted sensibility absorb the thoughts. Is 
it then reasonable to presume that similar practices 
in religion can have a tendency to promote the 
healthful vigor of piety ? 

By the constitution of the human mind, its emo- 
tions are strengthened in no other way than by ex- 
ercise and utterance ; nor does it appear that the 



ENTHUSIASM IN DEVOTION. 41 

religious emotions are exempted from this general 
law. The Divine Being is revealed to us in the 
Scriptures as the proper and supreme object of 
reverence, of love, and of affectionate obedience ; 
and the natural means of exercising and of express- 
ing these feelings are placed before us, both in the 
offices of devotion and in the duties of life, just in 
the same way that the opportunities of enhancing 
the domestic affections are afforded in the constitu- 
tion of social life. Why, then, should the Christian 
turn aside from the course of nature, and divert hte 
feelings from their outgoings towards the supreme 
object of devotional sentiment, by instituting curi- 
ous researches into the quality, and quantity, and 
composition of all his religious sensations ? This 
spiritual hypochondriasis enfeebles at once the ani- 
mal, the intellectual, and the moral life, and is usu- 
ally found in conjunction with infirmity of judgment, 
infelicity of temper, and inconsistency of conduct. 

But it is alleged that the heart, even after it has 
undergone spiritual renovation, is fraught with hid- 
den evils, which mingle their influence with every 
emotion of the new life, and that an often-^newed 
analysis is necessary in order to detect and to sepa- 
rate the lurking mischiefs. To know the evils of 
the heart is indeed indispensable to the humility and 
the caution of true wisdom ; and whoever is utterly 
untaught in this dismal branch of learning is a fool. 
But to make it the chief object of attention is not 
only unnecessary, but fatal to the health of the soul 

The motives of the social, not less than those of 
the religious life, are open to corrupting mixtures 



42 ENTHUSIASM IN DEVOTION. 

which spoil their purity, and impair their vigor 
As, for example, the emotion of benevolence, which 
impels us to go in quest of misery, and to labor and 
suffer for its relief, is liable, in most men's minds, to 
be alloyed by some particles of the desire of applause ; 
indeed, there are nice and learned anatomists of the 
heart, who assure us that benevolence, when placed 
in the focus of high optic powers, exhibits nothing 
but a gay feathery coat of vanity, set upon the flim- 
sinesS of selfish sensibility. Be it so — and let men 
of small souls amuse themselves with these petty 
discoveries. But assuredly the philanthropist who 
is followed through life by the blessings of those 
" that were ready to perish/' and whose memory 
goes down in the fragrance of these blessings to dis- 
tant ages, is not found to spend his days and nights 
in pursuing any such subtile micrologies. Have the 
sons of wretchedness been most holpen by Roche- 
foucaulds and Bruyeres, or by Howards ? If the 
philanthropist be a wise and Christian man, he will, 
knowing as he does the evils and infirmities of the 
heart, endeavor to expel and preclude the corrupting 
mischief that spring from within, by giving yet 
larger play to the great motives by which exclusively 
he desires to be impelled ; he will, with new intent- 
ness, devote himself to the service in which his bet- 
ter nature delights, and bring his soul into still nearer 
contact with its chosen objects, and oblige himself 
to hold more constant communion with the misera- 
ble ; and he will spurn, with renovated courage, the 
whispers of indolence and fear. Thus he pushes 
forward on the course of action, where alone, by the 



ENTHUSIASM IN DEVOTION. 43 

unalterable laws of human nature, the vigor of active 
virtue may be maintained and increased. 

If, indeed, the heart be a dungeon of foul and 
vaporous poisons, if it be " a cage of unclean birds," 
if "satyrs dance there," if the "cockatrice" there 
hatch her eggs of mischief, let the vault of dark 
impurity be thrown open to the purifying gales of 
heaven, and to the bright shining of the sun ; so 
shall the hated occupants leave their haunts, and the 
noxious exhalations be exhausted, and the deathly 
chills be dispelled. He surely need not want light 
and warmth who has the glories of heaven before 
him ; let these glories be contemplated with constant 
and upward gaze, while the foot presses with energy 
the path of hope, and the hand is busied in every 
office of charity. The Christian who thus pursues 
his way, will rarely, if ever, be annoyed by the 
spectres that haunt the regions of a saddened en- 
thusiasm. 

The moping sentimentalism which so often takes 
the place of Christian motives is to be avoided, not 
merely because it holds up piety to the view of the 
world under a deplorable disguise ; nor merely be- 
cause it deprives its victims of their comfort ; but 
chiefly because it ordinarily produces inattention to 
the substantial matters of common morality. The 
mind occupied from dawn of day till midnight with 
its own multifarious ailments, and busied in study- 
ing its pathologies, utterly forgets, or remissly dis- 
charges, the duties of social life : or the temper^ 
oppressed by vague solicitudes, falls into a state 
which makes it a nuisance in the house. Or, while 



44 ENTHUSIASM IN DEVOTION. 

the rising and falling temperature of the spirit is 
watched and recorded, the common principles of 
honor and integrity are so completely lost sight of, 
that, without explicit ill-intention, grievous delin- 
quencies are fallen into, which fail not to bring a 
deluge of reproach upon religion. These melancholy 
perversions of Christian piety might seem not to 
belong, with strict propriety, to our subject; but, in 
fact, religious despondency is the child of religious 
enthusiasm. Exhaustion and dejection succeed to 
excitement, just as debility follows fever. Yesterday 
the unballasted vessel was seen hanging out all the 
gayety of its colors, and spreading wide its indis- 
cretion before a breeze ; but the night came, the 
breeze strengthened, and to-day the hapless bark 
rolls dismasted, without help or hope, over the 
billows. 

Amid the various topics touched upon by Paul, 
Peter, John, and James, we scarcely find an allusion 
to those questions of spiritual nosology which, in 
later periods, and especially since the days of Augus- 
tine,* and very much in our own times, have filled 

* The metaphysico-devotional " Confessions" of the good Bishop 
of Hippo may perhaps not unfairly be placed at the head of this 
very peculiar species of literature. The author is reluctant to name 
some modern works which he might deem liable to objection, on the 
ground of their giving encouragement to religious sentimentalism, 
lest he should put into the mouth of the irreligious a style of criti- 
cism which they would not fail to abuse. He is aware that he runs 
a hazard of this sort in advancing what he has above advanced. 
He can only say that he thinks the subject much too important in 
itself, and too intimately connected with the theme of this Essay, to 
be passed in silence. And he cautions the irreligious reader, if the 
book should fall into the hand of any such unhappy person, not to 



ENTHUSIASM IN DEVOTION. 45 

a large space in religious writings. The Apostles 
believed, with unclouded confidence, the revelation 
committed to them, of judgment to come, of redemp- 
tion from wrath by Jesus Christ, and of eternal 
glory : — these great facts filled their hearts, and 
governed their lives, and, in conjunction with the 
precepts of morality, were the exclusive themes of 
their preaching and writing. Evidently they found 
neither time nor occasion for entering upon nice 
analyses of motives ; or for indulging fine musings 
and personal melancholies ; nor did they ever think 
of resting the all-important question of their own 
sincerity, and of their claim to a part in the hope of 
the gospel, upon the abstruse dialectics which have 
ince been thought indispensable to the definition of 
a saving faith. Assuredly the Christians of the first 
age did not suppose that volumes of metaphysical 
distinctions must be written and read before the 
genuineness of religious professions could be ascer- 
tained. The want, in modern times, of a vivid 
conviction of the truth of Christianity, is probably 
the occasional source of many of these idle and dis- 
heartening subtleties ; and it may be believed that a 

suppose that the author would either disparage the important duty 
of self-examination ; or speak slightingly of those mental struggles 
which will ever attend the conflict between good and evil in the heart 
that that has admitted the purifying influence of the Holy Spirit. 
What he pleads for, is, that self-examination should always have 
reference to the Christian standard of temper and conduct ; and that 
spiritual conflicts should consist of a resistance against evil disposi- 
tions or immoral practices. What he fears on the part of religious 
folks is, a forgetfulness of meekness, temperance, integrity, amid the 
illusions — now gloomy, now gaudy — of a diseased brain. 



46 ENTHUSIASM IN DEVOTION. 

sudden enhancement of faith — using the word in its 
unsophisticated meaning — throughout the Christian 
community would dispel, in a moment, a thousand 
dismal and profitless refinements, and impart to 
the feelings of Christians that unvarying solidity 
which naturally belongs to the perception of facts 
so immensely important as those revealed in the 
Scriptures. 

In witnessing, first, the entreaties, and supplica- 
tions, and tears of a convicted, condemned, and 
repentant malefactor, prostrate at the feet of his 
sovereign, and then the exuberance of his joy and 
gratitude in receiving pardon and life, no one would 
so absurdly misuse language as to call the intensity 
and fervor of the criminal's feelings enthusiastical : 
for, however strong, or even ungovernable those 
emotions may be, they are perfectly congruous with 
the occasion : they spring from no illusion ; but are 
fully justified by the momentous turn that has taken 
place in his affairs : in the past hour he contemplated 
nothing but the horrors of a violent, an ignominious, 
and a deserved death ; but now life, with its delights, 
is before him. It is true that all men in the same 
circumstances would not undergo the same intensity 
of emotion : but all, unless obdurate in wickedness, 
must experience feelings of the same quality. And 
thus, so long are the real circumstances under which 
every human being stands in the court of the Su- 
preme Judge are clearly understood, and duly felt, 
enthusiasm finds no place ; all is real ; nothing illu- 
sory. But when once these unutterably important 
facts are forgotten or obscured, then, by necessity 



ENTHUSIASM IN DEVOTION. 47 

every enhancement of religious feeling is a step on 
the ascent of enthusiasm ; and it becomes a matter 
of very little practical consequence, whether the 
deluded pietist be the worshipper of some system of 
abstract rationalism or of tawdry images and rotten 
relics ; though the latter error of the two is perhaps 
preferable, inasmuch as a warm-hearted fervor is 
always better than frozen pride. 

One commanding subject pervades the Scriptures, 
and rises to view on every page : this recurring 
theme, towards which all instructions and histories 
tend, is the great and anxious question of condemna- 
tion or acquittal at the bar of God, when the irre- 
versible sentence shall come to be pronounced. 
" How shall man be just with God ?" is the inquiry 
ever and again urged upon the conscience of him 
who reads the Bible with a humble and teachable 
desire to find therein the way of life. In subservi- 
ency to this leading intention, the themes which run 
through the sacred writings, and which distinguish 
those writings by an immense dissimilarity from all 
the remains of polytheistic literature, are those of 
guilt, shame, contrition, love, joy, gratitude, and 
affectionate obedience. And moreover, in conform- 
ity with this same intention, the Divine Being is re- 
vealed — if not exclusively, yet chiefly — as the party 
in the great controversy which sin has occasioned. 
The intercourse, therefore, which is opened between 
heaven and earth is almost confined to the momen- 
tous transactions of reconciliation and renewed 
friendship. When the Hearer of prayer invites in- 



48 ENTHUSIASM IN DEVOTION. 

terlocution with man, it is not, as perhaps in Eden, 
for the purposes of free and discursive converse, 
but for conference on a special business. " Come 
now, let us. reason together, saith the Almighty 
though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white 
as snow, though they be red like crimson, they shall 
be as wool." 

The same speciality of purpose and limitation of 
subject is plainly implied in the appointment of a 
Mediator and Advocate ; for although the establish- 
ment of this happy medium of approach authorizes 
and encourages even a boldness of access to the 
throne of the heavenly grace, it not less evidently 
imposes a restriction or peculiarity upon the inter- 
course between God and man. As the Intercessor 
exercises his office to obtain the bestowment of the 
benefits secured to mankind by his vicarious suffer- 
ings, the suppliant must surely have those benefits 
especially in view. The work and office of the 
Mediator, and the desires and petitions of the client, 
are correlatives. "No man," said the Saviour, 
" cometh unto the Father but by me." It follows 
then, naturally, that those who thus come to the 
Father should keep in constant remembrance the 
great intention of the mediatorial scheme, which is 
nothing else than to reconcile transgressors to the 
offended Majesty of heaven. But this unalterable 
condition of all devotional services contains a mani- 
fest and efficacious provision against enthusiastical 
excitements ; for the emotions of shame and peni- 
tence, and of joy in receiving the assurance of par- 
don, are not of the class with which the imagination 



ENTHUSIASM OF THE ROMISH WORSHIP. 49 

has nprar affinity, and, in a well-ordered mind, they 
may rise to their highest pitch without either dis- 
turbing the powers of reason, or infringing the most 
perfect inward serenity, or outward decorum. In a 
word, it may be confidently affirmed that no man 
becomes an enthusiast in religion, until he has for- 
gotten that he is a transgressor — a transgressor rec- 
onciled to God by mediation. 

But when, either by the refinements of rationalism 
— a gross misnomer — or by superstitious corruptions, 
the central facts of Christianity have become ob- 
scured^no middle ground remains between the apathy 
of formality and the extravagance of enthusiasm. 
The substance of religion is gone, and its ceremonial 
only remains — remains to disgust the intelligent, and 
to delude the simple. This momentous principle is 
strikingly displayed in the construction of the Romish 
worship. That false system assumes the great busi- 
ness of pardon and reconciliation with God to be a 
transaction that belongs only to priestly negotiation ; 
and as forgiveness has its price, and the priest is at 
once the appraiser of the offence, and the receiver of 
the mulct, it would be an intrusion upon his function, 
an interference that must derange his balances, for 
the transgressor to act on his own behalf, or ever to 
inquire what passes between the authorized agent of 
mercy, and the court of heaven. No room, then, is 
left in this system for the great and central subject 
of all devotional exercises. The doctrine of pardon 
having been cut off from worship, worship becomes 
unsubstantial. The expiatory death and availing 
intercession of the Son of God are taken within the 



50 ENTHUSIASM 

rail of sacerdotal usurpation ; and of necessity, if 
Jesus Christ is at all to be set forth " crucified before 
the people/' it can only be as an object of dramatic 
exhibition. This is the secret of the popish magnifi- 
cence of worship. Music, and painting, and pan- 
tomime, and a tinsel declamation, must do their 
several parts to disguise the subduction of the essen- 
tials of devotion. The laity, having nothing to 
transact with God, must be amused and beguiled, 
"lest haply the gospel of his grace" should enter 
the heart, and so the trading intervention of the 
priest be superseded. 

The great purpose of the Romish worship, which 
is to preclude all genuine feelings by substituting 
the enthusiasm of the imagination, is accomplished, 
it must be confessed, with consummate skill, and a 
just knowledge of the human mind. The end pro- 
posed will, manifestly, be best attained when the 
emotions which spring from the imagination are 
made to resemble as nearly as possible those that 
belong to the heart. The nicest imitation will be 
the most successful in this machinery of delusion 
Hence it is, that while all those means of excite- 
ment are employed which quicken the physical sen- 
sibilities, the deeper sensibilities of the soul are also 
addressed, and yet always by the intervention of 
dramatic or poetic images. A plain and undisguised 
appeal to the heart is unknown to the system. 

If it be for a moment forgotten, that in every bell, 
bowl, and vest of the Romish service there is hid a 
device against the liberty and welfare of mankind, 
and that its gold, and pearls, and fine linen are the 



OF THE ROMISH WORSHIP. 51 

deckings of eternal ruin ; and if this apparatus of 
worship be compared with the impurities and the 
cruelties of the old polytheistic rites, great praise 
may seem due to its contrivers. Nothing in Chris- 
tianity that might subserve the purposes of dramatic 
effect has been overlooked ; and even the most diffi- 
cult parts of the materials have been wrought into 
keeping. The humiliations and poverty which 
shroud the glory of the principal personage, and the 
horrors of his death ; as well as the awful beauty 
and compassionate advocacy of the virgin mother, 
the queen of heaven ; the stern dignity of the twelve ; 
the marvels of miraculous power ; the heroism of 
the martyrs ; the mortifications of the saints ; the 
punishment of the enemies of the church ; the prac- 
tices of devils ; the intercession and tutelary cares 
of the blessed ; the sorrows of the nether world, and 
the glories of the upper; — all these materials of 
poetic and scenic effect have been elaborated by the 
genius and taste of the Italian artists, until a spec- 
tacle has been got up which leaves the most splendid 
shows of the ancient idol-worship of Greece and 
Rome at a vast distance of inferiority.* 

* Strictly speaking, the religion of Greece was not eminently a 
religion of ritual splendor : on the contrary, there reigned in the 
public services of the most intellectual of all nations, much of the 
simplicity of devout fervor, much of the chasteness of fine taste, and 
much of the archaic and unadorned solemnity that had descended 
to the Greeks from the patriarchal ages. Even in their theatres, 
and on their race-courses, there was far less of pomp and finery 
than is demanded on similar occasions by a modern European pop- 
ulace. The Romans carried the sublime in decoration to a further 
point ; and in the same degree exchanged reason and taste for col- 
ors, gildings, and draperies. Upon the Roman barbaric magnifi- 



52 ENTHUSIASM 

But of what avail is all this sumptuous apparatus 
in promoting either genuine piety or purity of man- 
ners ? History and existing facts leave no obscurity 
on the question ; for the atrocity of crime, and the 
foulness of licentiousness, have ever kept pace with 
the perfection of the Romish service. Those nations 
upon whose manners it has worked its proper influ- 
ence with the fullest effect, have been the most 
irreligious and the most debauched. Splendid rites 
and odious vices have dwelt in peace under the 
same consecrated roofs ; and the actors and spec- 
tators of these sacred pantomimes have been wont 
to rush together from the solemn pomps of worship, 
to the chambers of filthy sin. 

The substitution of poetic enthusiasm for genuine 
piety may, however, take place apart from the deco- 
rations of the Romish service ; but the means em- 
ployed must be of a more intellectual cast: elo- 
quence must take the labor on itself, and must 
subject the doctrines of Scripture to a process of 
refinement which shall deposit whatever is substan- 
tial and affecting, and retain only what is magnific, 
pathetic, or sublime. And yet the principles of 
protestantism, and, in some respects, the national 

cence the corrupt church of the fifth and following centuries en- 
grafted, in a confused medley, the gorgeous conceptions of the east- 
ern nations — the terrible ideas of the northern hordes — the jugglings 
of Italian priests, and the sheer puerilities of monks and children. 
Such is the Christian worship of Rome ! Nevertheless, its elements 
comprise so much that is beautiful, or imposing, that its puerilities 
catch not the eye ; and a man must be very rational who altogether 
repels the impression of its services. 



OF POPULAR ORATORY. 53 

temper, and certainly the style and spirit, of the 
devotional services of the English Church, all dis- 
courage the attempt to hold forth the subjects of 
evangelical teaching in the gorgeous colors of an 
artificial oratory. And if the evidence of facts were 
listened to, such attempts would never be made by 
those who honestly desire to discharge the momen- 
tous duties of the Christian ministry in the manner 
most conducive to the welfare of their hearers. A 
blaze of emotion, having the semblance of piety, 
may be kindled by descriptive and impassioned 
harangues, such as those that are heard, on festival 
days, from French and Italian pulpits ; but it will 
be found that the Divine Spirit, without whose 
agency the heart is never permanently affected, re- 
fuses to become a party in any such theatric exer- 
cises ; these emotions will therefore subside without 
leaving a vestige of salutary influence. 

Yet is there perhaps a lawful, though limited 
range open, in the pulpit, to the powers of descrip- 
tive eloquence. The preacher may safely embellish 
all those subsidiary topics that are not included 
within the circle of the primary principles on which 
the religious affections are built ; for in addressing 
the imagination on these accessory points, he does 
not incur the danger of founding piety altogether 
upon illusions. The great and beautiful in nature, 
and perhaps the natural attributes of the Deity, and 
the episodes of sacred history, and the diversities of 
human character, and the scenes of social life, and 
the secular interests of mankind, may, by their in- 
cidental connection with more important themes, 



54 



ENTHUSIASM 



furnish the means of awakening attention, and of 
varying the sameness of theological discourse. Or 
even if no unquestionable plea of utility could be 
urged in recommendation of such divertisements, 
at the worst they are not chargeable with the dese- 
cration of fundamental doctrines ; nor do they gen- 
erate delusion where delusion must be fatal. But it 
is not so with the principal matters of the preacher's 
message to his fellow-men, which can hardly be 
touched by the pencil of poetic or dramatic elo- 
quence without incurring a hazard of the highest 
kind, inasmuch as the excitement so engendered 
more often totally excludes than merely impairs 
genuine feelings. 

If the taste of an audience be quickened and cul 
tivated, nothing is more easy to the teacher, or more 
agreeable to the taught, than a transition from the 
sphere of spiritual feeling to the regions of poetic 
excitement. Intellect is put in movement by the 
change ; conscience is lulled ; the weight that may 
have rested on the heart is upborne, and a state of 
animal elasticity induced, which, so long as it con- 
tinues, dispels the sadness of earthly cares. Let it 
be supposed that the subject of discourse is that one 
which, of all others, should be the most solemnly 
affecting to those who admit the truth of Christianity 
— the awful process of the last judgment. The 
speaker, we will believe, intends nothing but to in- 
spire a salutary alarm ; and with this view he essays 
his utmost command of language, while he describes 
the sudden waning of the morning sun, the blacken- 
ing of the heavens, the decadence of the stars, the 



OF POPULAR ORATORY. 55 

growing thunders of coming wrath, the clang of the 
trumpet, whose notes break the slumbers of the 
dead, the crash of the pillars of earth, the bursting 
forth of the treasures of fire, and the solving of all 
things in the fervent heat. Then the bright appear- 
ance of the Judge, encircled by the splendors of the 
court of heaven ; the convoked assemblage of wit- 
nesses from all worlds, filling the concave of the 
skies. Then the dense masses of the family of man. 
crowding the area of the great tribunal ; the sepa- 
ration of the multitude ; the irreversible sentence, 
the departure of the doomed, the triumphant ascent 
of the ransomed. 

Compared with themes like these, how poor were 
the subjects of ancient oratory ! And such is their 
force, and such the freshness of their power, that, 
though a thousand times presented to the imagina- 
tion, they may yet again, whenever skilfully managed, 
command breathless attention while the sands of 
the preacher's hour are running out. Nor ought it 
to be absolutely affirmed that excitements of this kind 
can never produce salutary impressions ; or that such 
impressions never accompany the hearer beyond the 
threshhold of the church, or survive a day's contact 
with secular interests : peremptory assertions of this 
sort are unnecessary to our argument. The question 
to be answered is, whether this species of movement 
be not of the nature of mere enthusiasm, and whether 
it does not ordinarily rather exclude than promote 
religious feelings. 

In reference to the illustration we have adduced, 
there might be room for the previous inquiry, 



56 ENTHUSIASM 

whether, on sound principles of interpretation, the 
language of Scripture ought to be understood as 
giving any warrant whatever to those material images 
I of terrible sublimity with which it is usual to invest 
I the proceedings of the future day of retribution. 
But let it be granted that the customary representa- 
tions of popular oratory are not erroneous ; and that 
when the preacher thus accumulates the physical 
machinery of terror, he is truly picturing that last 
scene of the terrestrial history of man. Even then 
it were not difficult, by an effort of reasoning and of 
meditation, and by following out the emotions of 
our moral constitution, to realize the feelings which 
must fill the soul on that day when the secrets of all 
hearts shall be published ; and these feelings may be 
imagined, on probable grounds of anticipation, to be 
such as must render all exterior perceptions dim 
and make even the most stupendous magnificence 
of the surrounding scene to fade from the sight. 
It is nothing but the present torpor of the moral 
sentiments that allows to material ideas so much 
power to occupy and overwhelm the mind; but 
when the soul shall be quickened from its lethargy, 
then good and evil will take that seat of influence 
whicn has been usurped by unsubstantial images of 
greatness, beauty, or terror. What are the thunder- 
ings of a thousand storms ; what the clangor of the 
trumpet, or the crash of earth, or the universal blaze ; 
what the dazzling front of the celestial array, or 
even the appalling apparatus of punishment, to the 
spirit that has become alive to the consciousness of 
its own moral condition, and is standing naked in 



OF POPULAR ORATORY. 57 

the manifested presence of the High and Holy One ' 
That time of judgment which is to dispel all dis- 
guises, and to drag sin from its coverts into the full 
light of heaven, will assuredly find no leisure for the 
discursive eye ; one perception, one emotion, will 
| doubtless rule exclusive in the soul. 
1 No extravagance or groundless refinement is con 
tained in the supposition that, in the great day of 
inquiry and award, the moral shall so overwhelm 
the physical, that when, by regular process of evi- 
dence, according to the forms of that perfect court, 
conviction has been obtained of even some minor 
offence against the eternal laws of purity or justice 
— an offence which, if confessed on earth, would 
hardly have brought a blush upon the cheek — the 
heart will be penetrated with an anguish of shame 
that shall preclude the perception of surrounding 
wonders : — on that day it will be sin, not a flaming 
world, that shall appall the soul. 

If anticipations such as these approve themselves 
to reason, it follows that the humblest and the least 
adorned eloquence of a purely moral kind, of which 
the only topics are sin and holiness, guilt and par- 
don, takes incomparably a nearer and a safer road 
towards the attainment of the great object of Chris- 
tian instruction than does the most overwhelming 
oratory that addresses itself chiefly to the imagination. 
Nay, it may be affirmed that such oratory, however 
artfully elaborated, and however well intended it may 
be, is nothing better than a curtain, finely wrought, 
indeed, with gorgeous colors, but serving to hide 
3* 



58 ENTHUSIASM. 

from men the substantial terrors of the day of ret- 
ribution. 

Nothing, then, can be more glaringly inequitable 
than the manner in which the imputation of enthu- 
siasm is frequently advanced in relation to pulpit 
oratory. On. the ground either of common sense 
or of philosophical analysis, the epithet should be 
assigned to him who, in neglect or contempt of the 
substance of his argument, draws an idle and profit- 
less excitement from its adjuncts. And on the same 
ground we must exculpate from such a charge the 
speaker who, however intense may be his fervor, 
is himself moved, and labors to move others, by 
what is most solemn and momentous in his subject. 
Now to recur for a moment to the illustration already 
adduced. In the anticipations we may form of the 
day of judgment, there are combined two perfectly 
distinct classes of ideas ; on the one side there are 
those images of physical grandeur and of dramatic 
effect which offer themselves to the imaginative 
orator as the proper materials of his art, and which, 
if skillfully managed, will not fail to produce the kind 
of excitement that is desired by both speaker and 
hearer. On the other side there are, in these antici- 
pations, the forensic proceedings which form the 
very substance of the fearful scene ; and these pro- 
ceedings, though of infinite moment to every human 
being, tend rather to quell than to excite the imag- 
ination, and therefore afford the preacher no means 
of producing effect, or even of keeping alive attention, 
unless the conscience of the hearer be alarmed, and 
his heart opened to the salutary impressions of fear, 



CRITERION OF ENTHUSIASM. 59 

shame, and hope. In looking then at these themes, 
so distinct in their qualities, we ask — Is he the en- 
thusiast who concerns himself with the substance ; 
or he who amuses himself and his hearers with the 
shadow ? Yet is it common to hear an orator spoken 
of as a sound and sober divine, who, for maintaining 
his influence and popularity, depends exclusively, 
constantly, and avowedly, upon his power to affect 
the imagination and the passions by poetic or dra- 
matic images, and who is perpetually laboring to 
invest the solemn doctrines of religion in a garb of 
attractive eloquence. Meanwhile a less accom- 
plished speaker, who — perhaps with more of vehem- 
ence than of elegance — insists simply upon the mo- 
mentous part of his message, is branded as an 
enthusiast, merely because his fervor rises some 
degrees above that of others. Ineffable folly ! to 
designate as enthusiastical the intensity of genuine 
emotions, and to approve as rational mere deliriums 
of the fancy, which intercept the influence of mo- 
mentous truths upon the heart. Yet such is the 
wisdom of the world ! 

It cannot be pretended that the distinction between 
genuine and enthusiastic piety turns upon a meta- 
physical nicety: nothing so important to all men 
must be imagined to await the determination of 
abstruse questions ; and if the distinction which has 
been illustrated in the preceding pages is not per- 
fectly intelligible, it may safely be rejected as of no 
practical value. But surely there can hardly be any 
one so little observant of his own consciousness as 



60 CRITERION OP ENTHUSIASM. 

not to have learned that the feelings excited by what 
is beautiful or sublime, terrible or pathetic, differ 
essentially from those emotions that are kindled in 
the heart by the ideas of goodness and of purity, or 
of malignancy and pollution. And every one must 
know that virtue and piety have their range among 
feelings of the latter, not of the former class ; and 
every one must perceive that if the former occupy 
the mind to the exclusion of the latter, the moral 
sentiments cannot fail to be impoverished or cor- 
rupted. It is, moreover, very evident that the great 
facts of Christianity possess, adjunctively, the means 
of exciting, in a powerful degree, the emotions that 
belong to the imagination, as well as those which 
affect the heart ; it therefore follows that the former 
may, in whole or in part, supplant the latter ; and 
thus a fictitious piety be engendered, which, while it 
produces much of the semblance of true religion, 
yields none of its substantial fruits. In this manner 
it may happen, not in rare instances, but in many, 
that if, in the history of an individual, a season of 
religious excitement has once taken place, though it 
had in it little or nothing of the elements of a change 
from evil to good, it may have been assumed as con- 
stituting a valid and inamissible initiation in the 
Christian life ; and if subsequently the decencies of 
religion and of morality have been preserved, a strong 
supposition of sincerity is entertained to the last, even 
though all was illusory. 

Yet these melancholy cases of self-deception are 
not to be remedied by mere explanations of the 
delusion ; on the contrary, the practical use to be 



CRITERION OF ENTHUSIASM. 61 

made of definitions and distinctions and descriptions 
in matters of religious feeling, is to exhibit the 
1 necessity and to enhance the value of more available 
tests of sincerity. Thus, for example, if it appear 
that, in times like the present, when religious pro- 
fession undergoes no severe probation, the danger 
of substituting some species of enthusiasm for true 
piety is extreme, there will appear the greater need 
to have recourse to those means of proof which in- 
fallibly discriminate between truth and pretension. 
This means of proof is nothing else than the standard 
of morals and of temper exhibited in the Scriptures. 
No other method of determining the most moment- 
ous of all questions is given to us, and none other 
is needed. We can neither ascend into the heavens, 
there to inspect the book of life, nor satisfactorily 
descend into the depths of the heart to analyze the 
complex and occult varieties of its emotions. But 
we may instantly and certainly know whether we 
do the things which he whom we call Lord has 
commanded. 



SECTION III. 

ENTHUSIASTIC PERVERSIONS OP THE DOCTRINE OP 
DIVINE INFLUENCE. 

A sentiment natural to the human mind, leads 
it to entertain and to dwell with pleasure upon the 
belief of the stability and permanence of the material 
world. Whether we view the multiform ranks of 
organized and animated beings which cover the 
earth, or examine the occult processes of nature, or 
look upwards, and contemplate distant worlds, the 
regularity with which the great machine of the 
visible creation effects its revolutions inspires a deep 
emotion of delight. This feeling brings with it 
involuntarily the supposition of extended duration ; 
nor is it without extreme difficulty that we can 
separate the idea of so vast a combination of causes 
and effects, moving forward with unfailing precision, 
from the thought, if not of eternity, yet of unnum- 
bered ages gone by, and yet to come. While these 
natural impressions occupy the mind, a strange 
revulsion of feeling takes place, if suddenly it be 
recollected that the massy pillars of creation, with 
its towering superstructure, and its high- wrought 
embellishments, and i.s innumerable tenants, are ab- 



DOCTRINE OF DIVINE INFLUENCE. 63 

solutely destitute of intrinsic permanency, and that 
the stupendous frame, with its nice and mighty move- 
ments, is incessantly issued anew from the fount of 
being. Apart from the divine volition, perpetually 
active, there can be no title to existence ,' and in the 
moment which should succeed to the cessation of the 
efficient will of the First Cause, all creatures must 
fall back to utter dissolution. 

Reason as well as faith justifies this doctrine, and 
demands that we deny independency to whatever is 
created ; devoutly confessing that God is " all in all." 
In him by whom they were formed, " all things con- 
sist :" in him all " live and move and have their be- 
ing." He is the author and giver of life ; and in 
the strictest sense it may be affirmed that every day 
is a day of creation, not less than that on which 
" the morning stars" uttered their earliest shout of 
joyous wonder : every moment during the lapse of 
ages, the word of power is pronounced from the 
height of the Eternal Throne — " Let there be light" 
and life. This belief constitutes the basement-prin- 
ciple of all religion, and is the sentiment from which 
piety must take its spring. The notion of indepen- 
dency and of eternity, suggested by the regular 
movements of nature, are thus thrown off from the 
surface of the visible world, and go to enhance our 
impressions of the glories of him who alone is eter- 
nal, unchangeable and independent. 

But it is certain that the conditions of existence, 
not less than its matter and form, are from God. In 
truth, the notions of being, and of well-being, are 
not to be distinguished in reference to the divine 



64 DOCTRINE OF 

! causation ; for each of his works is perfect, both in 
model and in movement. There can be therefore 
no particle of virtue or of happiness in the universe, 
any more than of bare existence, of which God is 
not the author. Neither Scripture nor philosophy 
permits exceptions or distinctions to be made ; for 
if we attribute to the Creator the organ, we must 
also attribute to him its functions, and its health 
too, which is only the perfection of its functions. 
And thus also, if the soul, with its complex appara- 
tus of reason, and moral sentiment, and appetite, be 
the handiwork of God, so is its healthful action. 
But the healthful action of the soul consists in love 
to God, and free subjection to his will. Virtue is 
nothing else in its substance, nothing else in its cause. 
As in him we live and move and have our being, so 
also it is he who " worketh in us to will and to do" 
whatever is pleasing to himself. Whether we take 
the safe and ready method of acquiescing in the ob- 
vious sense of a multitude of Scriptures, or pursue 
the laborious deductions of abstract reasoning, the 
same conclusion is attained, that, in the present 
world, and in every other where virtue and happiness 
are found, virtue and happiness are emanations of 
the divine blessedness and purity. 

But if this efflux of the divine nature belongs to 
the original constitution of intelligent beings, and is 
the permanent and only source of all goodness and 
felicity, it must be intimately fitted to the movements 
of mind, and must harmonize perfectly with its me- 
chanism ; just as perfectly as the creative influence 



DIVINE INFLUENCE. 65 

harmonizes with the mechanism and movements of 
animal life. 

Whatever is vigorous and healthful in the one 
kind of existence, or holy and happy in the other, is 
of God, whose power and goodness are, throughout 
the universe, the natural, not the supernatural cause 
of whatever is not evil. It were then a strange 
supposition to imagine that this impartation of vir- 
tue and happiness may. be perceptible to the subject 
of it, like the access of a foreign and extraordinary 
influence ; or that while the creative agency is alto- 
gether undistinguishable amid the movements of 
animal and intellectual life, the spiritual agency 
which conveys the warmth and activity of virtue to 
the soul, is otherwise than inscrutable in its mode of 
operation. As the one kind of divine energy does 
not display its presence by convulsive or capricious 
irregularities, but by the unnoticed vigor and prompt- 
itude of the functions of life ; so the other energy 
cannot, without irreverence, be thought of as making 
itself felt by praeter-natural impulses, or sensible 
shocks upon the intellectual system ; but must rath- 
er be imagined as an equable pulse of life, throbbing 
from within, and diffusing softness, sensibility and 
force through the soul. 

It is indeed true that if death or torpor has long 
held the moral powers in a state of suspended action, 
the returning principle of life, while working its way 
in contrariety to such a derangement of the system, 
may make itself felt otherwise than where no similar 
obstruction has to be overcome ; yet will it only be 
perceived by its collision with the evils that have 



66 DOCTRINE OF 

usurped the heart ; not by its own spontaneous move- 
ments. These are, in truth, the foreign and disturb- 
ing influences; it is these that make themselves 
known by their abrupt and capricious activity, by 
their convulsive or feverish force. Meanwhile the 
heavenly emanation which heals, cleanses, and 
blesses the spirit is still, and constant, and trans- 
parent, as "a well of water springing up unto eter- 
nal life." 

Nevertheless, from the accidents of the position 
in which we are placed, the divine influence may 
appear under an aspect immensely unlike that in 
which we should view it if our prospect of the in- 
telligent universe were more extended than it is. 
Thus the sad tenant of a dungeon, who has spent 
the days of many years alive in the darkness of the 
tomb, thinks far otherwise of the light of the sun, as 
he watches the pencil ray that traverses his prison 
wall, than those do who walk abroad amid the splen- 
dors of the summer's noon. Or we may imagine 
a world of once animated beings to be lying in the 
coldness and corruption of death, and we may sup- 
pose that the creative power returns and reanimates 
some among the dead, restoring them instantaneous- 
ly to the warmth, and vigor, and enjoyments of life. 
The spectator of this partial resurrection, who had 
long contemplated nothing but the dismal stillness 
and corruption of the universal death, might, in his 
glad amazement, forget that the death of so many, 
not the life of the few, is anomalous, and strange, 
and contrary to the order of nature. The miracle, 
if so he will term it, is nothing more — nothing else, 



DIVINE INFLUENCE. 67 

than what is every instant taking place throughout 
the wide realms of happy existence. The life-giving 
energy whose beams of expansive beneficence had 
been for a while, and in this world of death, inter- 
cepted or withdrawn, has returned with a kindling 
revulsion to its wonted channel ; and now moves on 
in copious tranquillity. The dead may indeed still 
outnumber the living ; nevertheless it is the condi- 
tion of the former, not that of the latter, that is ex- 
traordinary ; and the return to life, how amazing 
soever it may seem, could with no propriety be 
called supernatural. 

The language of Scripture, when it asserts the 
momentous doctrine of the renovation of the soul by 
the immediate agency of the Spirit of God, employs 
figurative terms which, while they give the utmost 
possible force to the truth so conveyed, indicate 
clearly the congruity of the change so effected with 
the original construction of human nature. The 
return to virtue and happiness is termed a resur- 
rection to life ; or it is a new birth ; or it is the 
opening of the eyes of the blind, or the unstopping 
the ears of the deaf ; or it is the springing up of a 
fountain of purity ; or it is a gale of heaven, neither 
seen nor known but by its effects ; or it is the 
growth and fructification of the grain ; or it is the 
abode of a guest in the home of a friend, or the 
residence of the Deity in his temple. Each of these 
emblems, and all others used in the Scriptures in 
reference to the same subject, combines the double 
idea of a change — great, definite, and absolute — and 
of a change from disorder, corruption, derangement, 



68 PERVERSIONS OF 

to a natural and permanent condition : they are all 
manifestly chosen with the intention of excluding 
the idea of a miraculous or semi-miraculous inter- 
vention of poweiv On the one hand, it is evident 
that a change of moral dispositions, so entire as to 
be properly symbolized by calling it a new birth, or 
a resurrection to life, must be much more than a 
self-effected reformation ; for if it were nothing 
more, these figures would be preposterous, unneces- 
sary, and delusive. But on the other hand, this 
change must be perfectly in harmony with the physi- 
cal and intellectual constitution of human nature, or 
the same figures would be devoid of propriety and 
significance. 

But a doctrine of divine influence like this, though 
so full of promise and of comfort to the aspirant 
after true virtue, offers nothing to those who desire 
transitory excitements, and who look for visible dis- 
plays of supernatural power ; and therefore it does 
not satisfy the religious enthusiast. Not content to 
be the recipient of an invigorating and purifying 
emanation, which, unseen and unperceived, elevates 
the debased affections, and fixes them on the Supreme 
Excellence ; nor satisfied to know that, under this 
healing influence, the inveteracy of evil dispositions 
is broken up, and a real advance made in virtue, he 
asks some sensible evidence of the indwelling of the 
Holy Spirit, and would fain so dissect his own con- 
sciousness as to bring the presence of the Divine 
agent under palpable examination. Or he seeks for 
some such extraordinary turbulence of emotion as 
may seem unquestionably to surpass the powers and 



THIS DOCTRINE. 69 

course of nature. Fraught with these wishes, he 
continually gazes upon the variable surface of his own 
feelings, in unquiet expectation of a supernatural 
troubling of the waters. The silent rise of the well- 
spring of purity and peace he neither heeds nor 
values ; for nothing less than the eddies and sallies 
of religious passion can assure him that he is, " born 
from above." 

A delusive notion of this kind at once diverts 
attention from the cultivation and practice of the 
virtues, and becomes a fermenting principle of frothy 
agitations, that either work themselves off in the 
sourness of an uncharitable temper, or are followed 
by physical melancholies ; or perhaps by such a 
relaxation of the moral sentiments as leaves the heart 
exposed to the seductions of vicious pleasure. Thus 
the religious life, instead of being a sunshine of 
augmenting peace and hope, is made up of an alter- 
nation of ecstasies and despondencies ; or worse, 
of devotional fervors and of sensual indulgences. 
The same error naturally brings with it a habit of 
referring to other, and to much less satisfactory tests 
of Christian character than the influence of religion 
upon the temper and conduct. So it happens that 
practical morality, from being slighted as the only 
valid credential of profession, comes, too often, to be 
thought of as something which, though it may be 
well in its way, is a separable adjunct of true piety. 

The rate of general feeling that exists at any time 
in a community measures the height to which the 
exoroitances of enthusiasm may attain ; thus in 
times of peculiar excitement a perverted notion of 



70 PERVERSIONS OF 

Divine influence is seen to ripen into the most fear- 
ful excesses. In such seasons it is not enough that 
the presence of the Holy Spirit should be indicated 
by unusual commotions of the mind ; but convulsions 
of the body also are demanded in proof of the 
heavenly agency. Extravagance becomes gluttonous 
of marvels ; religion is transmuted into pantomime ; 
delirium and hypocrisy, often found to be good 
friends, take their turns of triumph ; while humility, 
meekness, and sincerity, are trodden down in the 
rout of impious confusion. Deplorable excesses of 
this kind happily are infrequent, and never of long 
continuance ; but it has happened more than once in 
the history of Christianity that the habit of grimace 
in religion, having established itself in an hour of 
fanatical agitation, and become associated, perhaps, 
with momentous truths, as well as with the distin- 
guishing tenets of a sect, has long survived the 
warmth of feeling in which it originated, and whence 
it might derive some apology, and has passed down 
from father to son, a hideous mask of formality, 
worshipped by the weak, and loathed, though not 
discarded, by the sincere. Meanwhile an hereditary 
or a studied agitation of the voice and muscles, 
ludicrous, if it were not distressing to be seen, is 
made to represent before the world the sacred and 
solemn truth, a truth essential to Christianity, that 
the Spirit of God dwells in the hearts of Christians ! 
Whatever special interpretation may be given to 
our Lord's awful announcement concerning the sin 
against the Holy Ghost, an announcement which 
stands out as an anomaly in the midst of his declara- 



THIS DOCTRINE. 71 

tions of mercy, e v r ery devout mind must regard it 
as shedding, if we might say so, a penumbra of 
warning around the doctrine of divine influence, 
and will admit an apprehension lest he should, by 
any perversion of that doctrine, approach the pre- 
cincts of so tremendous a guilt, or become liable to 
the charge of giving occasion in others to unpardon- 
able blasphemies. 

If it be true that the agency of the Holy Spirit 
in renovating the heart is perfectly congruous with 
the natural movements of the mind, both in its 
animal and intellectual constitution, it is implied 
that whatever natural means of suasion, or of rational 
conviction, are proper to rectify the motives of man- 
kind, will be employed as concomitant, or second 
causes of the change. These exterior and ordinary 
means of amendment are, in fact, only certain parts 
of the entire machinery of human nature ; nor can 
it be believed that its Author holds in light esteem 
his own wisdom of contrivance ; or is at any time 
obliged to break up or to contemn the mechanism 
which he has pronounced to be " very good." That 
there actually exists no such intention and no such 
necessity, is declared by the very mode and form of 
revealed religion ; for this revelation consists of the 
common materials of moral influence — argument, 
history, poetry, eloquence. The same divine authen- 
tication of the natural modes of influence, is 
contained in the establishment of the Christian 
ministry, and in the warrant given to parental in- 
struction. These institutions concur to proclaim the 



72 PERVERSIONS OP 

great law of the spiritual world, that the heavenly 
grace which reforms the soul operates constantly in 
conjunction with second causes and ordinary means. 
In an accommodated, yet legitimate sense of the 
words, it may be affirmed of every such cause, 
that the " powers that be are of God ;" there is nc 
power but of his ordaining ; and " whosoever 
resisteth (or would supersede) the power, resisteth 
the ordinance of God." 

No one can doubt the possibility, abstractedly, of 
the immediate agency of the Omnipotent Spirit of 
Grace, without the intervention of means ; nor does 
any one doubt the power of God to support human 
life without aliment ; for " man liveth not by bread 
alone." But in neither case does he adopt this 
mode of independent operation : on the contrary, 
the Divine conduct, wherever we can trace it, is 
seen to approve much more the settled arrangements 
of wisdom, than the bare exertions of power. The 
treasures of that wisdom are surely never exhausted, 
nor can a case arise in which an immediate effort of 
Omnipotence becomes necessary merely to supply 
the lack of instruments. Nor does the vindication 
of the honors of Sovereign Grace need any such 
interpositions ; for the absolute necessity of an 
efficient power above that which resides in the 
natural means of suasion is abundantly proved, on 
the one hand, by the frequent inefficacy of these 
means, when employed under the most favorable 
circumstances ; and on the other, by the efficacy, as 
frequent, of means apparently inadequate to the pro- 
duction of the happy changes which result from tfeem 



THIS DOCTRINE. 73 

It is not only affirmed by Scripture, but established 
by experience, that " neither he that planteth, nor 
he that watereth, is anything ;" and at the same time 
it is affirmed by the one, and established by the other, 
that, apart from the planting and the watering of 
the husbandman, God, ordinarily, giveth no increase. 

No persuasion or instruction, we are assured, can 
of itself, in any one instance, avail to penetrate 
the deathlike indifference of the human mind to- 
wards spiritual objects ; but when once this torpor 
is removed by inscrutable grace, then the very 
feeblest and most inadequate means are sufficient 
for effecting the renovation of the heart. A single 
phrase, speaking of judgment to come, lisped by a 
child, has proved itself of power to awaken the soul 
from the slumber of the sensual life, if, when the 
sound falls on the ear, the spirit has been quickened 
from above. In such a case it were an error to 
affirm that the change of character was effected in- 
dependently of external means ; for though they 
were disguised under a semblance of extreme feeble- 
ness, and were such as might be easily overlooked 
or forgotten, they had in themselves the substantial 
powers of the highest eloquence ; and what might 
have been added to the momentous truth, so feebly 
announced, would have been little more than em- 
bellishment ; like the embroideries and embossments 
of the warrior's garniture, which add nothing to the 
vigor of his arm. 

Two causes seem to have operated in maintain- 
ing the notion that divine influence is often disso- 
ciated from concurrent means of suasion ; the first 
4 



74 PERVERSIONS OF 

of these is an ill-judged but excusable jealousy on 
the part of pious persons for the honor of Sove- 
reign Grace ; and is a mere reaction upon ortho- 
doxy, from the Pelagian and semi-Pelagian heresies : 
such persons have thought it necessary, for the 
safety of a most important doctrine, not merely to 
assert the supremacy of the ultimate agent ; but to 
disparage, as much as possible, all intermediate in- 
struments. The second of these causes is the ima- 
ginary difficulty felt by those who, having unad- 
visedly plunged into the depths of metaphysical 
theology, when they should have busied themselves 
only with the plain things of religion, fail in every 
attempt to adjust their notions of divine aid and 
human responsibility ; and, therefore, if they would 
be zealous for the honor due to the first, think 
themselves obliged almost to nullify the second. If 
any such difficulty actually exists, it should be made 
to rest upon the operations of nature, where it meets 
us not less than in the precincts of theology ; and 
the husbandman should desist from his toils until 
schoolmen have demonstrated to him the rationale 
of the combined operations of first and second caus- 
es. Or if such a demonstration must not be waited 
for, and if the husbandman is to commit the pre- 
cious grain to the earth, and to use all his skill and 
industry in favoring the inscrutable process of 
nature, then let the theologian pursue a parallel 
course, content to know, that while the Scriptures 
affirm in the clearest manner whatever may en- 
hance our ideas of the necessity and sovereignty of 
divine grace, they nowhere give intimation of a 



THIS DOCTRINE. 75 

suspended or halved responsibility on the part of 
man ; but, on the contrary, use, without scruple, 
language which implies that the spiritual welfare of 
those who are taught depends on the zeal and la- 
bors of the teacher, as truly as the temporal wel- 
fare of children depends on the industry of a father. 
The practical consequences of such speculative 
confusions are seen in the frightful apathy and cul- 
pable negligence of some instructors and parents, 
who, because a metaphysical problem, which ought 
never to have been heard of beyond the walls of 
colleges, obstructs their understandings, have ac- 
quired the habit of gazing with indifference upon 
the profaneness and immoralities of those whom 
their diligence might have retained in the path of 
piety and virtue. 

Another capital perversion remains to complete 
the enthusiastic abuse of the doctrine of divine 
influence ; and this is the supposition that those 
heavenly communications to the soul which form a 
permanent constituent of the Christian dispensation, 
are not always confined to the matter or to the rule 
of Scripture, and that the favored subject of this 
teaching, at least when he has made considerable 
advances in the divine life, is led on a higher path 
of instruction, where the written revelation of the 
will of God may be neglected or scorned. This 
bold delusion assumes two forms : the first is that of 
the tranquil contemplatist, the whole of whose relig- 
ion is inarticulate and vague, and who neglects or 
rejects the Scripture, not so much because he is 
averse to its truths, as because the mistiness of his 



76 PEKVERSIONS OF 

sentiments abhors whatever is distinct, and definite, 
and fixed. To read a plain narrative of intelligible 
facts, and to derive practical instruction therefrom, 
implies a state of mind essentially different from that 
which he finds it necessary to his factitious happi- 
ness to maintain : before he can thus read his Bible 
in childlike simplicity he must forsake the religion 
of dreams, and open his eyes to the world of realities ; 
in a word he must cease to be an enthusiast. 

The other form of this delusion should excite 
pity rather than provoke rebuke ; and calls for the 
skill of the physician, more than for the instructions 
of the theologian. The limits of insanity have not 
yet been ascertained ; perhaps it has none ; and 
certainly there are facts that favor the belief that 
the interval between common weakness of judgment 
and outrageous madness is filled up by an insensible 
gradation of absurdity, nowhere admitting of a line 
of absolute separation. Where, for example, shall 
we pause, and separate the sane from the insane, 
among those who believe themselves to be favored 
perpetually with special, particular, and ultra-script- 
ural revelations from heaven 1 The most modest 
enthusiast of this class, and the most daring vision- 
ary, stand together on the same ground of outlawry 
from common sense and scriptural authority ; and 
though their several offences against truth and sobri- 
ety may be of greater or less amount, they must both 
be dealt with on the same principle ; for both have 
alike excluded themselves from the benefit of appeal 
to the only authorities known among the sane part of 
mankind, namely, reason and Scripture : those who 



THIS DOCTRINE. 77 

reject both, surrender themselves over to pity — or 
compulsion. 

It would manifestly be better that men should be 
left to the darkness and wanderings of unassisted 
reason, than that they should receive the immediate 
instructions of heaven, unless they possess at the 
same time a public and fixed rule to which all such 
supernatural instructions are to be conformed, and 
by which they are to be discriminated ; for the errors 
of reason, how great soever they may be, carry with 
them no weight of divine authority ; but if the doc- 
trine of divine communications be admitted, and 
admitted without reference to a public and perma- 
nent standard of truth, then every extravagance of 
impiety may claim a heavenly origin ; and who shall 
venture to rebuke even the most pestilent error ; for 
how shall the reprover assure himself that he is not 
fighting against God ? 

It has already been affirmed that enthusiasm, far 
from being necessarily or invariably connected with 
fervor or feeling, is often seen to exist, in its wildest 
excesses, conjoined with the most frigid style of re- 
ligious sentiment. Thus, for example, the three egre- 
gious perversions of the doctrine of divine influence, 
which have been described in the preceding pages, 
are maintained, and have been professed and de- 
fended during several generations, by a sect re- 
markable, if not for the chilliness, at least for the 
stillness of its piety, and its contempt of the natural 
expressions of devotional feeling ; and even for a 
peculiar shrewdness of good sense in matters of 
wordly interest. But the incongruities of human 



78 PERVERSIONS OP THIS DOCTRINE. 

nature are immense and incalculable ; or it would i 
not be seen that general intelligence, and amiable ' 
manners, and Christian benevolence, are often linked 
with errors which, if viewed abstractedly, might 
seem as if they could belong only to minds that 
were lost to wisdom and piety. 



SECTION IV. 

ENTHUSIASM THE SOURCE OF HERESY. 

The creed of the Christian is the fruit of expo 
sition ; no part of it is elaborated by processes of 
abstract reasoning ; no part is furnished by the in- 
ventive faculties. To ascertain the true meaning 
of the words and phrases used by those who " spake 
as they were moved by the Holy Ghost," is the 
single aim of the studies of the theologian. Inter- 
pretation is his function. But the work of inter- 
pretation, considered as an intellectual employment, 
differs essentially from that of the student of physical 
or abstract science ; for it neither needs nor admits 
of the ardor by which those pursuits are animated. 
Nor has nature furnished the faculties that are em- 
ployed in the labor of expounding the terms of 
ancient documents with any very vivid susceptibility 
of pleasurable excitement. The toils of the lawyer 
of the philologist, and of the theologian, must there- 
fore be sustained by a reference to some substantial 
motive of utility ; and though there may be a few 
minds so peculiarly constituted as to cultivate these 
studies with enthusiastic ardor, from the pure im- 
pulse of native taste, the ranks of a numerous body 



80 THE ENTHUSIASM 

of men can never be filled up by spontaneous labor- 
ers of this sort. 

Christianity, being as it is, a religion of documents 
and of interpretation, must utterly exclude from 
I its precincts the adventurous spirit of innovation. 
Theology offers no field to men fond of intellectual 
enterprise : the Church has no work for them ; or 
none until they have renounced the characteristic 
propensity of their mental conformation. True re- 
ligion, unlike human science, was given to mankind 
in a finished form, and is to be learned, not im- 
proved ; and though the most capacious human mind 
is nobly employed while concentrating all its vigor 
upon the acquirement of this documentary learning, 
it is very fruitlessly, and very perniciously occupier 
in attempting to give it. a single touch of amendment. 

The form under which Christianity now presents 
itself as an object of study does, in a much greater 
degree, discourage and prevent speculation and nov- 
elty, than it did in the early ages ; and in fact, if 
all the varieties of opinion which have appeared 
during the eighteen centuries of church history are 
numbered, a large majority of them will be found to 
belong to the first three centuries, and to the eastern 
church. That is to say, to the period when doctors 
of theology, possessing the rule of faith in their ver- 
nacular tongue, had no other intellectual employ- 
ment than that either of inventing novelties of doc- 
trine, or of refuting them. Other causes may, no 
doubt, fairly be alleged as having had influence in 
quickening that prodigious efflorescence of heretical 
doctrine which infected the whole atmosphere of 



OF HERESY. 81 

Christianity, in the east, during the second and third 
centuries, and at a time when the western church 
maintained, in a good degree, the simplicity of Script- 
ural faith; but the cause above-mentioned ought 
not to be ranked among the least efficient. 

But theology in modern times offers an unbound- 
ed field of toil to the student ; — the toil of mere ac- 
quisition, and of critical research ; for a familiar 
knowledge of three languages, at least, is indispensa- 
ble to every man who would take respectable rank 
as a teacher of Christianity ; especially to every one 
who aspires to distinction in his order ; and some 
acquaintance with two or three other languages, is 
also an object of reasonable ambition to the theolo- 
gical student. And moreover, an accomplished ex- 
pounder of Scripture must be well versed in pro- 
fane and church history ; nor may he be entirely 
ignorant of even the abstract and physical sciences. 
These multifarious pursuits, which are to be ac- 
quired compatibly with the discharge of the public 
duties of the pastoral office, assuredly furnish em- 
ployment enough for the most active and the most 
industrious mind long beyond the period of college 
initiation. Nor are w T e to consider merely the na- 
tural influence produced upon the intellectual habits 
oy these employments, in preventing that discur- 
siveness of the inventive faculties which is a prin- 
cipal source of heresy; for its quality, not less than 
its quantity, is decidedly corrective of the propen- 
sity to generate novelties of opinion. 

Every one who has made the experiment well 
knows that the toils of learned acquisition have a 
4* 



82 THE ENTHUSIASM 

direct tendency to impair the freshness and force ot 
the intellectual constitution, to chill and cloud the 
imagination, and to break the elasticity of the in- 
ventive faculty ; if not to blunt the keenness of the 
powers of analysis. Thus they indispose the mind 
to the wantonness of speculation, and impart to it 
rather the timidity, the acquiescence, the patience, 
which are proper to the submissive exposition of an 
authoritative rule of faith. Biblical learning, there- 
fore, not only serves directly to dispel errors of 
opinion by throwing open the true sense of Script- 
ure ; but it contains within itself what might be 
termed a physical preventive against heresy, which, 
if it be not always efficacious, is perceptibly opera- 
tive. Nothing then can be more desirable than 
that public opinion should continue, as it now does, 
to demand erudition from the teachers of religion. 

Nevertheless, when a large class of men is pro- 
fessionally devoted to the study of theology, there 
will not be wanting some whose mental conforma- 
tion (not to mention motives which are foreign to 
our subject) impels them to abandon the modest path 
of exposition, and to seek, within the precincts of 
religion, for the gratifications that accompany ab- 
struse speculation, discovery, invention, exaggera- 
tion, and paradox. All these pleasures of a morbid 
or misdirected intellectual activity may be obtained 
in the regions of theology, not less than in those of 
mathematical and physical science, if once the re- 
straints of a religious and heartfelt reverence for the 
authority of the word of God are discarded. The 
principal heresies that have disturbed the church, 



OF HERESY. 83 

may, no doubt, fairly be attributed to motives spring- 
ing from the pride or perverse dispositions of the 
human heart ; but often a mere intellectual enthusi- 
asm has been the real source of false doctrine. 

Errors generated in this manner possess, com- 
monly, some aspect of beauty or of greatness, or of 
philosophical simplicity, to recommend them ; for as 
they were framed amid a pleasurable excitement of 
the mind, so they will have power to convey a kin- 
dred delight to others. And such exorbitances of 
doctrine, when advanced by men of powerful or 
richly furnished minds, conceal their deformity and 
evil tendency beneath the attractions of intelligence. 
But the very same extravagances and showy para- 
doxes, when caught up by inferior spirits, presently 
lose their garb, not only of beauty, but of decency, 
and show themselves in the unpleasing bareness of 
error. The mischief of heresy becomes often far 
more active and conspicuous in second hands than 
it was in those of its authors ; and the reason is that 
it is usually the child of intellectualists — an inoffen- 
sive order of men : but no sooner has it been brought 
forth and reared, than it joins itself, as by instinct, 
to minds of vulgar quality, and in that society soon 
learns the dialect of impiety and licentiousness. 
The heresiarch, though he may be more blame- 
worthy, is often much less audacious, and less cor- 
rupted, than his followers ; for he, perhaps, is only 
an enthusiast ; they have become fanatics. 

In like manner as the passion for travel impels a 
man to perambulate the earth, and then makes him 

I 



84 THE ENTHUSIASM 

sigh to think that he has not other continents to 
explore, so the constitutional enthusiasm of specula- 
tion urges its victims to traverse the entire circuit 
of opinions : and even then leaves him insatiate 
of novelty. It is not caprice, much less is it the 
excessive solicitude of an honest mind, always in- 
quiring for truth ; but rather the impetus of a too 
highly-wrought intellectual activity, which carries 
the heretic onward and onward, from system to sys- 
tem, blazing as he goes, until there remains no form 
of flagrant error with which he has not scared the 
sober world. Then, though reason may have for- 
gotten all consistency, pride has a better memory ; 
and as this passon forbids his return to the truths 
he has so often denounced, and denounced from all 
points of his various course, nothing remains for 
him, when the season of exhaustion arrives, but to 
go off into the dark void of infidelity. 

The sad story has been often realized. In the 
conformation of the heretic by temperament, there 
is more of intellectual mobility than of strength : a 
ready perception of analogies gives him both facility 
and felicity in collecting proofs, or rather illustra- 
tions in support of whatever opinion he may adopt. 
So copious are the materials of conjectural argu- 
ment which crowd upon him, and so nice is his 
tact of selection, and so quick his skill of arrange- 
ment, that ere dull sobriety has gathered up its 
weapons, he has reared a most imposing front oi 
"defence. Pleased, and even surprised, with his own 
work, he now confidently maintains a position 
which at first he scarcely thought to be seriously 



OF HERESY. 85 



tenable. Having convinced himself of the cer- 
tainty of the new truth, and implicated his vanity 
in its support, deeper motives stimulate the activity 
of the reasoning and inventive faculties; and he 
presently piles demonstration upon demonstration, 
to a most amazing height, until it becomes, in his 
honest opinion, sheer infatuation to doubt. In this 
state of mind, of what value are the opinions of 
teachers and of elders 1 Of what weight the belief 
of the catholic church in all ages ? They are no- 
tbiog to be accounted of; there seems even a glory 
and a heroism, as well as a duty, in spurning the 
fallible authority of man : modesty, caution hesita- 
tion, are treasons against conscience and heaven . 
The young heresiarch, we will suppose to have 
spent the earliest season of life, while yet the in- 
genuousness of youth remained unimpaired, in the 
pursuits of literature or science, and to have been 
icmorant of Christianity otherwise than as a system 
o°f forms and offices. But the moment of awaken- 
ing arrives ; some appalling accident or piercing 
sorrow sets the interests of time in abeyance, and 
opens upon the soul the vast objects of immortality. 
Or the eloquence of a preacher may have effected 
the change. In these first moments of a new hie, 
the great and common doctrines of religion, per- 
ceived in the freshness of novelty, afford scope 
enough to the ardor of the spirit ; and perhaps, 
also °a new sentiment of submission quells, in some 
measure, that ardor : the craving of the mind does 
not yet need heresy; truth has stimulus enough; 
and even after truth has become somewhat vapid, 



86 THE ENTHUSIASM 

the restraints of connection and friendship have 
force to retain the convert three years, or five, in 
the bosom of humility. But the first accidental 
contact with doctrinal paradox kindles the consti- 
tutional passion, and rouses the slumbering facul- 
ties to the full activity of adult vigor ; contention 
ensues ; malign sentiments, although perhaps foreign 
to the temper, are engendered, and these impart 
gloom to mysticism, and add rancor to extrava- 
gance. And now, no dogma that is obnoxious, 
terrific, intolerant, schismatical, fails to be, in its 
turn, avowed by the delirious bigot, who burns with 
ambition to render himself the enemy — not so much 
of the world, as of the church. 

But will even the last extravagance of false doc- 
trine allay the diseased cravings of the brain ? Not 
unless that physical inertness which, towards the 
middle period of life, sometimes effects a cure of 
folly, or perhaps some motive of secular interest, 
supervenes. Otherwise a progression must take 
place, or a retrogression ; and when the heart is sick 
and faint from the exhaustion of over-activity, and 
when the whispers of conscience have long ceased 
to be heard, and when the emotions of genuine piety 
have become painfully strange to the soul, nothing 
is so probable as an almost sudden plunge from the 
pinnacle of high belief, into the bottomless gulf of 
universal scepticism. A lamentable catastrophe of 
this kind, and which is only the natural issue of 
an intellectual enthusiasm, would, no doubt, much 
oftener take place than it does, if slender reasons of 



OF HERESY. 87 

worldly prudence were not usually found to be of 
firmer texture than all the logic of theology. 

A chronic intellectual enthusiasm, when it becomes 
the source of heresy, most frequently betakes itself 
to those exaggerations of Christian doctrine which 
pass under the general designation of Antinomian- 
ism ; — n ot the Antinomianism of workshops, which 
is a corruption of Christianity concocted by merce- 
nary teachers expressly to give license to the sensu- 
alities of those by whom they are salaried ; but the 
Antinomianism of the closet, which is a translation 
into Christian phraseology of the ancient stoicism. 
The alleged relationship consists, not so much in the 
similar abuse which is made in both systems of the 
doctrine of necessity, but in the leading intention 
of both ; which is to inclose the human mind in a 
perfect envelop of abstractions, such as may effec- 
tively defend it from the importunate sense of re- 
sponsibility, or obligation, and such as shall render 
him who wears it a passive spectator of his own 
destinies. The doctrine of fate was seized upon by 
ancients sophists, and is taken up by the Antinomian, 
because, better than any other principle, it serves 
the purposes of this peculiar species of illusory de- 
lectation. Yet the Christian theorist has some signal 
advantages over his ancestor. For example : the 
egregious absurdities of the ancient philosophist met 
him on every walk of life, and stood in the way of 
constant collision with the common sense of man- 
kind : and thus the sage, in spite of his gravity and 
self-command, could hardly pass a day in public 



88 THE ENTHUSIASM 

without being put to shame by some glaring proof 
of practical inconsistency ; for as often as he spoke 
or acted like other men, as often as he made it evi- 
dent that he did not really think himself a statue or 
a phantom, he gave the lie direct to the fooleries of 
his scholastic profession. 

But the modern stoic, while, by a sinister inference 
from his doctrine, he takes large leave of indulgence 
to the flesh (an indulgence which he uses or not, as 
his temperament may determine) and so borrows the 
practical part of Epicureanism, transfers his egregious 
dogmas to the unseen world, where they come not 
at all in contact with common sense. In the vast un- 
known of an eternity on both sides of time, he finds 
range enough, and immunity, for even the most 
enormous paradoxes which ingenuity can devise, or 
sophistry defend. Besides, the argumentative re- 
sources of the modern are incomparably more co- 
pious and various and tangible than those of the 
ancient wrangler ; for the latter could only fall 
back, ever and again, upon the same abstractions ; 
but the former may take position on any part of a 
very wide frontier ; for having so large and multi- 
farious a volume as the Scriptures in his hand, and 
having multiplied the argumentative value of every 
sentence it contains almost indefinitely by adopting 
the rule of Origen and the Rabbis, that the whole 
of Scripture is mystical, and may bear every sense 
that can be found in it, he is at once secure from 
the possibility of being confuted, and revels in an 
unbounded opulence of proof and illustration in sup- 
port of his positions To the sober interpreter, the 



OF HERESY. 89 

Bible is one book ; but to the Antinomian it is as a 
hundred volumes. 

With a field so wide, and means so inexhaustible, 
the Christian theorist lives in a paradise of specula- 
tion ; and no revolution to which human nature is 
liable can be less probable than that which must 
take place before he abandons his world of factitious 
happiness. The dreamer must feel that sin is a 
substantial ill, in which himself is fatally implicated, 
and not a mere abstraction to be discoursed of ; he 
must learn that the righteous God deals with man- 
kind not fantastically, but on terms adapted to the 
intellectual and moral conformation of that human 
nature, of which he is the author ; and he must 
know that salvation is a deliverance, in which man 
is an agent, not less than a recipient. 

It belongs not at all to our subject to attempt a 
confutation of this, the most strange of the many 
corruptions which Christianity has undergone ; our 
part is merely to exhibit against the system the 
charge of delusion or enthusiasm ; and this charge 
needs no other proof than the plain statement that, 
whereas Christianity recognizes the actual mechan- 
ism of human nature, and appeals to the moral sen- 
timents, and urges motives of every class, and labors 
to enhance the sense of responsibility, and authen- 
ticates the voice of conscience, Antinomianism, with 
indurated arrogance, spurns all such sentiments, and 
substitutes nothing in their room but bare specula- 
tions ; and these speculations are all of a kind to 
cherish the selfish deliriums of luxurious contempla- 
tion. But to take a course like this, is, whatevei 



90 THE ENTHUSIASM 

may be the subject in question, the part of an 
enthusiast. Whoever, in any such manner, cuts 
himself off from the common sympathies of our 
nature, and makes idiot sport of the energies of 
moral action, and has recourse, either to a jargon of 
sophistries, or to trivial evasions, when other men 
act upon the intuitions of good sense, and rebuts 
every idea that does not minister gratification either 
to fancy or to appetite, such a man must be called 
an enthusiast, even though he were at the same 
time — if that were possible — a saint. 

We have spoken of the enthusiasm of mysticism. 
But there is also an enthusiasm of simplification. 
The lowest intellectual temperature, not less than 
the highest, admits extravagance, and sometimes 
even admits it more ; for warmth and movement are 
less unnatural in the world of matter or of mind, 
than congelation : what so grotesque as the corusca- 
tions of frost ? If the reasoning faculty had not its 
imaginative impulse, the sciences would never have 
moved a step in advance of the mechanic arts ; much 
less would the high theorems of pure mathematics, 
or the abstruse principles of metaphysics, have been 
known to mankind. But if this natural and useful 
impulse be irregular and excessive, it becomes the 
spring of errors. Yet the perfection of science, and 
its general diffusion in modern times, operate so 
effectually to keep in check that propensity to ab- 
surd speculation of which the elements are always 
in existence, that if we are in search of specimens 
of this species of intellectual disease, we must expect 



OF HERESY. 91 

to meet with them only without the pale of educa- 
tion, and among the self-taught philosophers of 
work-shops, who sometimes amuse the hour of 
stolen leisure in digesting systems of the universe, 
other than the one which is demonstrated in our 
universities. 

Driven from the enclosures where the demon- 
strable sciences hold empire, the enthusiasts of 
speculation turn off upon ground where there is 
more scope, more obscurity, more license, and less 
of the stern and instant magistracy of right reason. 
Some give themselves to politics, some to political 
economy, and some to theology ; and whatever they 
severally meet with that is in its nature, or that has 
become concrete, complex, or multifariously in- 
volved, they seize upon with a hungry avidity. 
The disease of the brain has settled upon the faculty 
of analysis ; all things compound must therefore be 
severed, and not only be severed but left in disunion. 
It cannot but happen that, in these zealous labors of 
dissolution, some happy strokes must now and then 
fall upon errors which wiser men have either not 
observed, or have spared : mankind owes therefore 
a petty debt of gratitude to such speculatists for 
having removed a few excrescences from ancient 
systems. But these trivial successes, which are 
hailed with much applause by the vulgar, who de- 
light in witnessing any kind of destruction, and by 
the splenetic, who believe themselves to gain what- 
ever is torn from others, inspire the heroes of reform 
with unbounded hopes of effecting universal revolu- 
tions ; and they actually become inflated to so high 



92 THE ENTHUSIASM 

a degree of presumption, that, at a time when all 
the great questions which can occupy the human 
mind have been thoroughly discussed, and discussed 
with every advantage of liberty, of learning, and of 
ability, they are not ashamed to adopt a style of 
speaking as if they thought themselves morning 
stars on the verge of the dark ages, destined to 
usher in the tardy splendors of true philosophy 
upon a benighted world ! 

— Or of true religion : as if the Christian doctrine, 
in its most essential principles, had become extinct, 
even in the days of the apostles, and had not merely 
remained under the bushel of superstition during 
the ages of religious despotism, but long after the 
chains of that despotism were broken, and after the 
human mind, with all the vigor and intensity of 
renovated intelligence and renovated piety had given 
its utmost force, and its utmost diligence to the ex- 
position of the canon of faith. Of what sort, it might 
be asked, were this canon, if its meaning on the most 
important points might, age after age, be utterly 
misunderstood by ninety-nine learned, honest, and 
unshackled men, and be perceived only by the one 1 
Yet this is the supposition of simplificators, who from 
the impulse of a faulty cerebral conformation, must 
needs disbelieve, because theology would otherwise 
afford them no intellectual exercise. 

It is a common notion, incessantly repeated, and 
seldom sifted, that diversity of opinion, on even the 
cardinal points of Christian faith, is an inevitable and 
a permanent evil, springing, and always to spring, 



OF HERESY. 93 

from the diversity of men's dispositions and intel- 
lectual faculties. Certainly no other expectation 
could be entertained if Christian theology were what 
moral philosophy was among the sophists of ancient 
Athens — a system of abstractions, owning subjec- 
tion to no authority. But this is not the fact ; and 
though hitherto the ultimate authority has been 
much abused or spurned, the re-establishment of its 
power on fixed and well understood principles seems 
to be far from an improbable event. We say more, 
that an actual progression towards so happy a revo- 
lution is perceptible in our own times. We do not 
for a moment forget that a heartfelt acquiescence in 
the doctrines of Scripture must ever be the result 
of a divine influence, and is not to be effected by 
the same means which produce uniformity of opinion 
on matters of science. But while we anticipate, on 
grounds of strong hope, a time of refreshing from 
above, which shall subdue the depraved repugnances 
of the human mind, we may also anticipate, on 
grounds of common reasoning, a natural process of 
reform in theology — considered as a science, which 
shall place the intrinsic incoherence of heresy in the 
broad light of day, henceforward to be contemned 
and avoided. 

The fields of error have been fully reaped and 
gleaned ; nor shall aught that is new spring up on 
that field, the whole botany of which is already 
known and classified. It is only of late that a fair, 
competent, and elaborate discussion of all the prin- 
cipal questions of theology has taken place ; and the 
result of this discussion waits now to be manifested 



94 THE ENTHUSIASM 

by some new movement of the human mind. Great 
and happy revolutions usually stand ready and latent 
for a time until accident brings them forward. Such 
a change and renovation we believe to be at the door 
of the Christian Church. The ground of contro- 
versy has contracted itself daily during the last half 
century ; the grotesque and many-colored forms of 
ancient heresy have disappeared, and the existing 
differences of opinion (some of which are indeed 
of vital consequence) all draw round a single contro- 
versy, the final decision of which it is hard to believe 
shall long be deferred ; for the minds of men are 
pressing towards it with an unusual intentness. This 
great question relates to the authority of Holy Script- 
ure ; and the professedly Christian world is divided 
upon it into three parties, comprehending all smaller 
varieties of opinion. 

The first of these parties, constitued of the 
Romish Church, and its disguised favorers, affirms 
the subordination of the authority of Scripture to 
that of tradition and the Church. This is a doctrine 
of slavery and of ignorance, which the mere progress 
of knowledge and of civil liberty must overthrow, if 
it be not first exploded by other means. The second 
party comprises the sceptical sects of the Protestant 
world, which agree in affirming the subordination of 
Scripture to the dogmas of natural theology ; in 
other words to every man's notion of what religion 
ought to be. These sects, having no barrier between 
themselves and pure deism, are continually dwindling 
by desertions to infidelity ; nor will they be able tc 
hold their slippery footing on the edge of Christianity 



OF HERESY. 95 

a day after a general revival of serious piety has 
taken place. 

The third party, comprehending the great major- 
ity of the Protestant body, bows reverently, and 
implicitly, and with intelligent conviction, to the 
absolute authority of the word of God, and knows of 
nothing in theology that is not affirmed, or fairly im- 
plied, therein. The differences existing within this 
party, how much soever they may be exaggerated by 
bigots, will vanish as the mists of the morning under 
the brightness of the sun, whenever a refreshment of 
pious feeling descends upon the Church. They con- 
sist, in part, of mere misunderstandings of abstract 
phrases, unknown to the language of Scripture ; in 
part they hinge upon political constitutions, of which 
so much as is substantially evil is by no means of 
desperate inveteracy : in part these differences are 
constituted of nothing better than the lumber of an- 
tiquity, the worthless relics of forgotten janglings 
handed down from father to son, but now, by so 
many transmissions, worn away to an extreme slen- 
derness, and quite ready to crumble into the dust of 
everlasting forgetfulness. Surely men are not always 
so to remain children in understanding, that the less 
shall be preferred to the greater ; nor shall it always 
be that the substantial evils of schism are perpetuated 
and vindicated on the ground of obscure historical 
questions, fit only to amuse the idle hours of the 
antiquary. This trifling with things sacred must 
come to its end, and the great law of love must 
triumph, and the Christian Church henceforward 
have " one Lord, one faith, one baptism." 



SECTION V. 

THE ENTHUSIASM OF PROPHETIC INTERPRETATION. 

Disappointment is perhaps the most frequent 
of all the occasional causes of insanity ; but the 
sudden kindling of hope sometimes produces the 
same lamentable effect. Yet before this emotion, 
congenial as it is to the human mind, can exert so 
fatal an influence, the expected good must be of im- 
measurable magnitude, and must appear in the light 
of the strongest probability ; nor must even the 
vagueness of a distant futurity intervene ; otherwise, 
the swellings of desire and joy would be quelled, 
and reason might maintain its seat. On this prin- 
ciple perhaps it is, that the vast and highly excit- 
ing hope of immortal life very rarely, even in sus- 
ceptible minds, generates that kind of emotion 
which brings with it the hazard of mental derange- 
ment. Religious madness, when it occurs, is most 
often the madness of despondency. But if the glo- 
ries of heaven might, by any means, and in contra- 
vention of the established order of things, be brought 
out from the dimness and concealment of the unseen 
world, and be placed ostensibly on this side of the 
darkness and coldness of death, and be linked with 



PROPHETIC INTERPRETATION. 97 

objects familiarly known, they might then press so 
forcibly upon the passion of hope, and so inflame 
excitable imaginations, that real insanity, or an 
approach towards it, would probably, in frequent in- 
stances, be the consequence. 

A provision against mischiefs of this kind is 
evidently contained in the extreme reserve of the 
Scriptures on all subjects connected with the unseen 
world. This reserve is so singular, and so extraor- 
dinary, seeing that the Jewish poets, prophets and 
preachers, were Asiatics, that it affords no trivial 
proof of the divine origination of the books : an 
intelligent advocate of the Bible would choose to 
rest an argument rather upon the paucity of its dis- 
coveries, than upon their plenitude. 

But now a confident and dogmatical interpreta- 
tion of those prophecies that are supposed to be on 
the eve of fulfilment, has manifestly a tendency thus 
to bring forth the wonders of the unseen world, and 
to connect them in sensible contact with the famil- 
iar objects and events of the present state. And such 
interpretations may be held with so full and over- 
whelming a persuasion of their truth, that heaven 
and its splendors may seem to stand at the door of 
our very homes : to-morrow, perhaps, the hasten- 
ing crisis of the nations shall lift the veil which so 
long has hidden the brightness of the eternal throne 
from mortal eyes : each turn of public affairs, a 
war, a truce, a conspiracy, a royal marriage, may 
be the immediate precursor of that new era, wherein 
it shall no longer be true, as heretofore, that " the 
things eternal are unseen," 
5 



98 THE ENTHUSIASM OF 

When an opinion, or, we should rather say, a per- 
suasion of this imposing kind is entertained by a 
mind of more mobility than strength, and when it 
has acquired form, and consistency, and definiteness, 
by being long and incessantly the object of contem- 
plation, it ma} r easily gain exclusive possession of 
the mind : and a state of exclusive occupation of the 
thoughts by a single subject, if it be not real mad- 
ness, differs little from it ; for a man can hardly be 
called sane who is mastered by one set of ideas, and 
who has lost the will or the power to break up the 
continuity of his musings. 

Whether or not this explanation be just, it is 
matter of fact that no species of enthusiasm has car- 
ried its victims nearer to the brink of insanity than 
that which originates in the interpretation of unful- 
filled prophecy. It need not be asked whether there 
is not some capital error on the side of many who 
have given themselves to this study ; for the indica- 
tions of pitiable delusion have been of a kind not at 
all ambiguous. There must be present some lurk- 
ing mischief when the study of any part of Holy 
Scripture issues in extravagance of conduct, and in 
an offensive turgidness of language, and produces — 
not quietness and peace, but a wild and quaking 
looking-for of impending wonders. There must be a 
fault of principle, if the demeanor of Christians be 
such that those who occupy the place of the un- 
learned are excused when they say " Ye are mad." 

That some peculiar danger haunts this region of 
Biblical inquiry is established by a double proof; for 
not only have men of exorbitant imaginations and 



PROPHETIC INTERPRETATION. 99 

feeble judgment rushed towards it instinctively, and 
with the eagerness of infatuation ; but sometimes 
the soundest understandings have lost, in these in- 
quiries, their wonted discretion. At several periods 
of church history, and again in our own times, mul- 
titudes have drunk to intoxication of the phial of 
prophetic interpretation ; and, amid imagined peals 
of the mystic thunder, have become deaf to the voice 
both of common sense and of duty. The piety of 
such persons — if piety it may be called — has made 
them hunger and thirst, nor for " the bread and 
water of life," but for the news of the political 
world. In such instances it may be confidently 
affirmed, previously to a hearing of the argument, 
that, even if the interpretation were true, it has 
become entangled with some knotted thread of 
error. 

The proper remedy for evils of this kind is not 
to be found in the timid or overbearing prohibitions 
of those who endeavor to prevent the mischief 
by interdicting inquiry ; and who would make it 
a sin or a folly for a Christian to ask the meaning 
of certain portions of Scripture. Cautions and 
restrictions of this nature are incompatible with the 
principle of Protestantism, as well as unnecessary, 
arrogant, and unavailing. If indeed man possessed 
any means of intrusion upon the mysteries of the 
upper world, or upon the secrets of futurity, there 
might be room to reprehend the audacity of those 
who should attempt to know by force or by impor- 
tunity of research what has not been revealed. But 
when the unseen and the future are, by the spon- 



100 THE ENTHUSIASM OP 

taneous grace of Heaven, in part set open, and when 
a message which might have been withheld, has 
been sent to earth, encircled with a benediction like 
this — " Blessed are they that hear, and keep these 
words :" then it may most safely be concluded that 
whatever is not marked with the seal of prohibition, 
is open to scrutiny. In truth, there is something 
incongruous in the notion of a revelation enveloped 
in menace and restriction. But be this as it may, it 
is certain that whoever would shut up the Scriptures, 
in whole or in part, from his fellow disciples, or who 
affirms it to be unsafe or unwise to study such and 
such passages, is bound to show reasons of the most 
convincing kind for the exclusion. " What God 
has joined, let not man put asunder ;" but he has 
connected his blessing, comprehensively, with the 
study of his word. It should be left to the Romish 
Church to employ that faulty argument of captious 
arrogance, which prohibits the use of whatever may 
be abused. Unless, then, it can be shown that a 
divine interdiction encloses the prophetic portions 
of Scripture, it must be deemed an ill-judged and 
irreligious, though perhaps well-intended usurpation, 
in any one who assumes to plant his little rod of 
obstruction across the highway of Revelation. 

Moreover, prohibitions of this kind are futile, 
because impossible to be observed. Every one 
admits that the study of those prophecies which 
have already received their accomplishment is a 
matter of high importance and positive duty ; " we 
have a sure word of prophecy, to which we do well 
to take heed." But how soon, in attempting to dis 



PROPHETIC INTERPRETATION. 101 

charge this duty, are we entangled in a snare, if 
indeed the study of unfulfilled prophecy be in itself 
improper ; for many of the prophecies, and those 
especially which are the most definite, and the most 
intelligible, stretch themselves across the wide gulf 
of time, and rest upon points intervening between 
the days of the seer and the hour when the mystery 
of providence shall be finished : and these compre- 
hensive predictions, instead of tracking their way 
by equal and measured intervals through the course 
of ages, traverse vast spaces unmarked ; and with a 
sudden bound, parting from an age now long gone by, 
attain at once the last period of the human economy. 
These abrupt transitions create obscurities which 
must either shut up the whole prophecy from in- 
quiry, or necessitate a scrutiny of the whole ; for at 
a first perusal, and without the guidance of learned 
investigation, who shall venture to place his finger 
on the syllable which forms the boundary between 
the past and the future, and which constitutes the 
limit between duty and presumption ? A prediction 
which may seem to belong to futurity, will, perhaps, 
on better information be found to regard the past ; 
or the reverse. These extensive prophecies, and 
such are those of Daniel and of John, must then 
either be shunned altogether from the fear of tres- 
passing on forbidden ground, or they must be studied 
entire, in dependence upon other means than vol- 
untary ignorance for avoiding presumption and en- 
thusiasm. Whoever would discharge for others the 
difficult office of marking, throughout the Scriptures, 
the boundaries of lawful investigation, must himself 



102 THE ENTHUSIASM OF 

first have committed the supposed trespass upon the 
regions of unfulfilled prophecy. We conclude, there- 
fore, that a separation which no one can effect, is not 
really needed. 

It is surely a mistaken caution which says — of the 
Apocalypse, for example — it is a dark portion of 
Scripture, and better let alone than explored. Very 
unhappy consequences are involved in such an in- 
terdiction. This magificent book is introduced to 
the regards of the Church as a discovery of things that 
must shortly come to pass. Now we must either 
believe that the &v r&x^^ was intended to indicate a 
period of eighteen hundred years (perhaps a much 
longer term, or admit that the initial, and probably 
the larger portions of the prophecy have already 
received their seal of verification from history, and 
come therefore fairly within the scope of even the 
most scrupulous rule of inquiry, and in fact should 
now form part of the standing evidence of the truth 
of Christianity. To think less than this seems to 
imply a very dangerous inference. If a part of this 
prophecy be actually accomplished ; and if yet it be 
impracticable to assign the predictions to the events, 
will not one at least of the great purposes for which, 
as we are taught, prophecy was given, have been 
rather defeated than served ? There is not perhaps 
a fulfilled prophecy on the page of inspiration which 
learned ingenuity might not plausibly allege to have 
been hitherto altogether misunderstood, and errone- 
ously supposed to relate to such or such events. It 
is a matter of course that, when a multitude of 
minds variously influenced, and too often influenced 



PROPHETIC INTERPRETATION. 103 

by a wish to establish a theory upon which literary 
ambition may build its pretensions, are employed in 
the exposition of mystic predictions, every scheme to 
which any appearance of probability can be given, 
should actually find an advocate. And then those 
who wish to discourage inquiry may vauntingly say 
— See how various and how opposite are the opinions 
of interpreters ! Meanwhile, it may be perfectly 
true, that among these various interpretations there 
may be one which, though not altogether unexcep- 
tionable, or wholly free from difficulties, will firmly 
secure the approval of every unprejudiced and intel- 
ligent inquirer. 

Some very sober Christians, while endeavoring 
by all means to secure the young against the mania 
of prophetical interpretation, seem little aware of 
how far they are treading upon the very path which 
infidelity frequents. To advise a diligent study of 
prophecy (to those who have the leisure and learn- 
ing requisite) would it not be far safer, than to 
shrug the shoulders in sage alarm, and to say — 
Prophecy ! oh, let it alone ! 

The ancient Church received no cautions against 
a too eager scrutiny of the great prophecy left to 
excite its hope : on the contrary, the pious were 
" divinely moved" to search what might be the 
purport and season of the revelation made by the 
" Spirit of Christ" to the prophets ; and though 
these predictions did in fact give occasion to the 
delusions of " many deceivers," and though they 
were greatly misunderstood, even by the most pious 
and the best informed of the Jewish people ; yet 



104 THE ENTHUSIASM OF 

did not the foreknowledge of these mischiefs and 
errors call for any such restrictions upon the spirit 
of inquiry as those wherewith some persons are now 
fain to hedge about the Scriptures. 

To the Christian Church the second coming of 
Christ stands where his first coming stood to the 
Jewish, namely, in the very centre of the field of 
prophetic light ; and a participation in the glories 
" then to be revealed" is even limited to those who 
in every age are devoutly " looking for him." It is 
true that this doctrine of the second coming of 
Christ has, like that of his first, wrought strongly 
upon enthusiastic minds, and been the occasion of 
some pernicious delusions ; yet, for the correction 
of these incidental evils, we must look to other 
means than to any existing cautions given to the 
Church in the Scriptures against a too earnest 
longing for the promised advent of her King. To 
snatch this great promise from Scripture in hasty 
fear, and then to close the book lest we should see 
more than it is intended we should know, is not our 
part. On the contrary, it is chiefly from a diligent 
and comprehensive study of the terms of the great 
unfulfilled prophecy of Scripture, that a preservative 
against delusion is to be gathered. To check assid- 
uous researches by cautions which the humble may 
respect, but which the presumptuous will certainly 
contemn, is to abandon the leading truth of Reve- 
lation to the uncorrected wantonness of fanaticism. 

It is often not so much the instrinsic qualities ol 
an opinion, as the unwarrantable confidence witl 



PROPHETIC INTERPRETATION. 105 

which it is held, that generates enthusiasm. Per- 
suade the dogmatist to be modest, as every Christian 
undoubtedly ought who thinks himself compelled to 
dissent from the common belief of the Church ; 
persuade him to give respectful attention to the 
argument of an opponent ; in a word, to surrender 
the topmost point of his assurance, and presently 
the high temperature of his feelings will come down 
near to the level of sobriety. To doubt after hear- 
ing of sufficient evidence, and to dogmatize where 
proof is confessedly imperfect, are alike the indica- 
tions of infirmity of judgment, if not of perversity 
of temper ; and these great faults, which never pre- 
dominate in the character apart from the indulgence 
of unholy passions, seem often to be judicially visited 
with a hopeless imbecility of the reasoning faculties. 
Thus, while the sceptic becomes, in course of time, 
incapable of retaining his hold even of the most 
certain truths, the dogmatist, on the other hand, 
loses all power of suspending for a moment his de- 
cisions ; and, as a feather and a ball of lead descend 
with the same velocity when dropped in a vacuum, 
so do all propositions, whether loaded with a weight 
of evidence or not, instantly reach, in his understand- 
ing, the firm ground of absolute assurance. 

Instead, therefore, of enhancing the arrogance of 
the half-insane interpreter of prophecy by inviting 
him to display the blazing front of his argument, it 
may be better,, if it can be done, to demonstrate that 
even though it should appear that his opinion carries 
a large balance of probability, there is still a special 
and very peculiar impropriety in the tone of dogma- 
5* 



106 THE ENTHUSIASM OF 

tism which, on this particular subject, he assumes ; 
so that the error of the general Church, if it be an 
error, is actually less than the fault of him who, in 
this temper, may boast that he has truth on his side. 
Such a case of special impropriety may, in this 
instance, very clearly be made out. 

The language of prophecy is either common or 
mystical. Predictions delivered in the style of com- 
mon discourse, and free from symbols as they are 
little liable to diversities of explication, do not often 
tempt the ingenuity of visionaries : they may, there- 
fore, be excluded from consideration in the present 
instance. Mystic prophecy, or future history writ- 
ten in symbols, under guidance of the divine fore- 
knowledge, in being committed to the custody and 
perusal of mankind, must be presumed to conform 
itself to the laws of that particular species of com- 
position to which it bears the nearest analogy. For 
if the Divine Being condescends at all to hold inter- 
course with men, it cannot be doubted that he will 
do so, not only in a language known to them, but in 
a manner perfectly accordant to the rules and pro- 
prieties of the medium he designs to employ. Now 
the prophecies in question not merely belong to the 
general class of symbolic writing, but there is to be 
discerned in them, very plainly, the specific style of 
the enigma, which, in early ages, was a usual mode 
of embodying the most important and serious truths. 
In the enigma, the principal subject is, by some in- 
genuity of definition, and by some ambiguity of de- 
scription, at once held forth and concealed. The 



PROPHETIC INTERPRETATION. 107 

law by which it is constructed demands, that while 
there is given, under a guise, some special mark 
which shall prevent the possibility of doubt when 
once the substance signified is seen, that substance 
shall be so artfully depicted that the description, 
though it be a true representation, may admit of 
more than one explication. There can be no genu- 
ine and fair enigma in which these conditions are 
not complied with. For if no special mark be given, 
the true solution must want the means ol vindicating 
its exclusive propriety, when the substance signified 
is declared ; a vague riddle is none. Or if the special 
mark be not disguised, if no varnishing opacity be 
spread over it, the substance is manifested at once, 
and the enigma nullified. Again, if the general de- 
scription is not so contrived as to admit of several 
plausible hypotheses, then also the whole intention 
of the device is destroyed, and the special mark 
rendered useless ; for what need can there be of an 
infallible indicator which is to come in as arbiter 
among a number ol' competing solutions, if, in fact, 
no room be left for diversity of interpretation ? 

Whenever, therefore, among mystic enunciations 
we can detect the existence of some couched and 
specific note of identification, we may most cer- 
tainly conclude that it is placed there to serve a fu- 
ture purpose of discrimination among several ad- 
missible modes of solution ; or in other words, that 
the enigma is designedly so framed as to tempt and 
to allow a diversity of hypothetical explanations. An 
enigmatical or symbolical enunciation, conformed to 
these essential rules, serves the threefold purpose ol 



108 THE ENTHUSIASM OP 

presenting a blind to the incurious, a trap to the 
dogmatical, and an exercise of modesty, of patience, 
and of sagacity to the wise. And this seems to be 
the result intended, and actually accomplished by 
the symbolical prophecies of Scripture. 

When the subject of enigma already stands within 
the range of our knowledge, and requires only to be 
singled out, the process of solution is simple. The 
several suppositions that seem to comport with the 
ambiguous description are to be brought together ; 
and then the special mark must be applied to each 
in turn, until such a precise and convincing corre- 
spondence is discovered as at once strips the false 
solutions of all their pretensions : if the enigma be 
fairly constructed, this method of induction will 
never fail of success. Thus, with the page of his- 
tory before us, those prophecies of Daniel, for 
example, which relate to the invasion of Greece by 
the Persians, to the subsequent overthrow of the 
Persian monarchy by the Macedonians, to the divi- 
sion of the conquests of Alexander, to the spread of 
the Roman arms, and to the subdivision of the Ro- 
man Empire, are interpreted without hazard of error, 
and with a completeness and a speciality of coinci- 
dence, that carries a conviction of the divine dicta- 
tion of those prophecies to every honest mind. 

A course somewhat less gratifying to the eager- 
ness of enthusiastic spirits must be pursued, if the 
subject of the sacred enigma does not actually stand 
within our view ; if it rest in a foreign region, as, 
for example, in the region of futurity. It will by 
no means follow that a symbolic prediction, which 



PROPHETK, INTERPRETATION. 109 

remains unfulfilled, ought not to be made the subject 
of investigation ; for as the description doubtless 
contains, by condensation, the substance of the un- 
known reality, and perhaps also much of its charac- 
ter, it may, even when mingled with erroneous 
interpretations, serve importot purposes in the 
excitement of pious hope. The delivery of these 
enigmas into the hands of the Church, and their 
intricate intermixture with fulfilled prophecies, and 
their being everywhere embossed with attractive 
lessons of piety and virtue, not to mention the 
explicit invitation to read and study them, may 
confidently be deemed to convey a full license ot 
examination. Yet in these instances the well-known 
laws of the peculiar style in which the predictions 
are enveloped, suggest restrictions and cautions 
which no humble and pious expositor can overlook 
The fault of the dogmatist in prophecy is then 
manifest. Is a mystic prediction averred to be 
unfulfilled ? then we know, that, by the essential 
law of its composition, it is designedly, we might 
say artfully constructed, so as to admit of several, 
and perhaps of many, plausible interpretations, 
having nearly equal claims of probability ; and we 
know, moreover, that the special mark couched 
amid the symbols, and which in the issue is to arbi- 
trate among the various solutions, is drawn from 
some minute peculiarity in the surface and com- 
plexion of the future substance, and therefore can- 
not be available for the purpose of discrimination, 
until that substance, in the shape and color of real- 
ity, starts forth into day. 



HO THE ENTHUSIASM OF 

The expositor, therefore, who presumptuously 
espouses any one of the several interpretations of 
which an enigmatical prophecy is susceptible, and 
who fondly claims for it a positive and exclusive 
preference, sins most flagrantly against the unalter- 
able laws of the language of which he professes 
himself a master. If dogmatism on matters not 
fully revealed be in all cases blameworthy, it is 
especially to be condemned in the expositor of enig- 
matic prophecy ; and that, not merely because the 
events so predicted rest under the awful veil of 
futurity, and exist only in the prescience of the 
Deity ; but because the chosen style of the com- 
munication lays a distinct claim to modesty, and 
demands suspension of judgment. — The use of sym- 
bols speaks a design of concealment ; and do we 
suppose that what God has hidden, the sagacity of 
man shall discover ? In issuing the prediction, he 
does indeed invite the humble inquiries of the 
Church ; and in employing symbols which have a 
conventional meaning he gives a clew to learned 
research ; and yet, by the combination of these 
symbols in the enigmatic form, an articulate warn- 
ing is presented against all dogmatical confidence 
of interpretation. 

The adoption of an exclusive theory of exposition 
will not fail to be followed by an attempt to attach 
the special marks of prophecy to every passing event ; 
and it is this very attempt which sets enthusiasm in 
a flame ; for it belongs, in common, to all religious 
irregularities that, though mild and harmless while 
roaming at large among remote or invisible objects 



PROPHETIC INTERPRETATION. Ill 

they assume a noxious activity the moment that 
they fix their grasp upon things near and tangible. 
There is scarcely any degree of sobriety of temper 
which can secure the mind against fanatical restless- 
ness when once the habit has been formed of collating, 
daily, the newspaper and the prophets ; and the man 
who, w r ith a feeble judgment and an excitable imagin- 
ation, is constantly catching at political intelligence — 
Apocalypse in hand — w 7 alks on the verge of insan- 
ity, or worse, of infidelity. In this feverish state of 
the feelings, mundane interests, under the guise of 
faith and hope, occupy the soul to the exclusion of 
" things unseen and eternal ;" meanwhile, the heart- 
affecting elements of piety and virtue become vapid 
to the taste, and gradually fall into forgetfulness. 

The fault of the dogmatical expositor of prophecy 
is especially manifested when he assumes to deter- 
mine the chronology of unfulfilled predictions. In 
the instance of prophetic dates, the different lines of 
conduct suggested by the different styles of the com- 
munication, are readily perceived, and cheerfully 
observed by judicious and modest interpreters. We 
may take, for illustration, the predicted duration of 
the captivity of Judah, which was made known by 
Jeremiah (xxix. 10) in the intelligible terms of 
common and popular computation : nor could the 
supposition of a symbolic sense of the words be 
admitted by any sober expositor. On the authority 
of this unequivocal prediction, Daniel, as the time 
spoken of drew near, made confession and suppli- 
cation in the full assurance of warranted faith. In 
this confidence there was no presumption, for his 



£12 THE ENTHUSIASM OF 

persuasion rested, not on the assumed validity of 
this or of that ingenious interpretation of symbols j 
but upon an explicit declaration which needed only 
to be read — not expounded. 

But when the beloved seer received from his ce- 
lestial informant the date of seventy weeks, which 
should fix the period of the Messiah's advent and 
preparatory sufferings, the employment of symbolic 
terms of itself announced the double intention of, at 
once, revealing the time, and of concealing it. For, 
as the terms, though mythic, bore a known import, 
they could not be thought to be absolutely shut up 
from research ; yet, as by the mode of their com- 
bination they became susceptible of a considerable 
diversity of interpretation, the wise and good might, 
after all their diligence, differ in opinion as to the 
precise moment of accomplishment. Thus was de- 
vout inquiry at once invited and restrained ; invited, 
because the language of the prediction was not 
unknown ; and restrained, because it still asked for 
interpretation, and admitted a diversity of opinion. 
Those pious persons, therefore, who, at the time of 
the Messiah's birth, were " looking for the consola- 
tion of Israel," could not, unless favored with per- 
sonal revelations, affirm " this is the very year of the 
expected deliverance ;" for the symbolic chronology 
might, with an appearance of reason, bear a some- 
what different sense. Yet might such persons ? 
though not perfectly agreed in opinion, lawfully and 
safely join in an exulting hope, that the time spoken 
of was not far distant, when the son of David should 
appear. 



PROPHETIC INTERPRETATION. 113 

The same rule is applicable to the position of the 
church at the present moment. No one, it may be 
affirmed, can have given due attention to the ques- 
tions which have heen of late so much agitated, 
without feel i x\s compelled to acknowledge, that a 
high degree of probability supports the belief of 
an approaching extraordinary development of the 
mystery of providence towards Christendom, and 
perhaps, towards the whole family of man. That 
this probability is strong, might be argued from the 
fact that it has wrought a general concurrence of 
belief among those whose modes of thinking on most 
subjects are extremely dissimilar. Christians, amid 
many contrarieties of opinion, are, with a tacit or an 
explicit expectation, looking for movement and pro- 
gression, to be effected either by a quickened energy 
of existing means, or by the sudden operation of new 
causes. This probable opinion, if held in the spirit 
of Christian modesty, affords, under the sanction of 
the coolest reason, a new and strong excitement to 
religious hope. He who entertains it may exult- 
ingly, yet calmly exclaim, " The night is far spent, 
the day is at hand ;" and this kindling expectation 
will rouse him to greater diligence in every good 
work, to greater watchfulness against every defile- 
ment of heart, and frivolity of spirit, and inconsist- 
ency of conduct : he will strive with holy wakeful- 
ness, to live as the disciple should who is " waiting 
for his Lord." Thus far he can justify the new vi- 
vacity of his hopes upon the ground of the permanent 
motives of religion ; for he feels nothing more than 
a Christian may well always feel ; and the opinion he 



114 THE ENTHUSIASM OF 

entertains relative to the near accomplishment of 
ultimate prophecy, serves only as an incitement to a 
state of mind in which he would fain be found, if 
called suddenly from the present scene. While giv- 
ing free admission to sentiments of this sort, he knows 
that though he should be mistaken in his theoretical 
premises, he shall certainly be right in his practical 
inference. 

But if the discreet Christian is tempted or solicited 
to admit an incongruous jumble of political specu- 
lations and Christian hopes ; if he is called upon to 
detach in any degree, his attention from immediate 
and unquestionable duties, and to fix his meditations 
on objects that have no connection with his personal 
responsibility ; then he will check such an intrusion 
of turbulence and distraction, the tendency of which 
he feels to be pernicious, by recollecting that his 
opinion, how probable soever it may seem, is, at the 
best, nothing more than one hypothesis among the 
many, which offer themselves in explanation of 
an enigmatical prediction. To-day this hypothesis 
pleases him by its plausibility ; to-morrow he may 
reject it on better information. 

Nothing, then, can be much more precise than the 
line which forms the boundary between the legitimate 
and an enthusiastic feeling on the subject of prophecy. 
Is a prediction couched in symbol ? is it entangled 
among perplexing anachronisms ? is it studded with 
points of special reference ? We then recognize the 
hand of Heaven in the art of its construction ; and 
we know that it is so moulded as to admit and invite 
the manifold diversities of ingenious explication ; 



PROPHETIC INTERPRETATION. 115 

and that, therefore, even the true explication must, 
until the day of solution, stand undistinguished in a 
crowd of plausible errors. But for a man to pro- 
claim himself the champion of a particular hypothesis, 
and to employ it as he might an explicit prediction, 
is to affront the Spirit of prophecy by contemning 
the chosen style of his announcements. And what 
shall be said of the audacity of one who, with no 
other commission in his hand than such as any man 
may please to frame for himself, usurps the awful 
style of the seer, pronounces the doom of nations, 
hurls thunders at thrones, and worse than this, puts 
the credit of Christianity at pawn in the hand of 
infidelity, to be lost beyond recovery, if not re- 
deemed on a day specified by the fanatic for the 
verification of his word ! 

The agitation which has recently taken place on 
the subject of prophecy, may, perhaps, ere long, 
subside, and the church may again acquiesce in its 
old sobrieties of opinion.* And yet a different and 
a better result of the existing controversy seems not 
altogether improbable ; for when enthusiasm has 
raved itself into exhaustion, and has received from 
time the refutation of its precocious hopes ; and 
when, on the other side, prosing mediocrity has 
uttered all its saws, and has fallen back into its own 
slumber of contented ignorance, then the spirit of 
research and of legitimate curiosity, which no doubt 
has been diffused among not a few intelligent students 
of Scripture, may bring on a calm, learned, and pro- 

* Written in 1828, 



116 THE ENTHUSIASM OF 

ductive discussion of the many great questions that 
belong to the undeveloped destiny of man. And it 
may be believed that the issue of such discussions 
will take its place among the means that shall concur 
to usher in a brighter age of Christianity. 

Not indeed as if any fundamental principle of 
religion remained to be discovered ; for the spiritual 
church has, in every age, possessed the substance of 
truth, under the promised teaching of the Spirit of 
truth. But, obviously, there are many subjects, 
more or less clearly revealed in the Scriptures, upon 
which serious errors may be entertained, consistently 
with genuine, and even exalted piety : they do 
indeed belong to the entire faith of a Christian, but 
they form no part of its basis ; they may be detached 
or disfigured without great peril to the stability of 
the structure. Almost all opinions relating to the 
unseen world, and to the future providence of God 
on earth, are of this extrinsic or subordinate char- 
acter ; and, as a matter of fact, pious and cautious 
men have, on subjects of this kind, held notions so 
incompatibly dissimilar, that the one or the other 
must have bean utterly erroneous. But the detec- 
tion of error always opens a vista of hope to the 
diligence of inquiry ; and with the mistakes of our 
predecessors before us for our warning, and with a 
highly improved state of Biblical learning for our 
aid, it may fairly be anticipated that a devout and 
industrious reconsideration of the evidence of Script- 
ure will yet achieve some important improvements 
in the opinions of the church on these difficult and 
obscure subjects. 



PROPHETIC INTERPRETATION. 117 

Nevertheless, though an expectation of this kind 
may seem reasonable, there is, on the other hand 
some ground to imagine that the accomplishment 
of the inscrutable designs of the Divine Providence 
may require that the pious should henceforth, as 
heretofore, continue to entertain not only imperfect, 
but very mistaken notions of the unseen and the 
future worlds. Well-founded hopes and erroneous 
interpretations have been linked together in the his- 
tory of the church in all ages, even from that hour 
of fallacious exultation when the mother of a mur- 
derer exclaimed — " I have gotten the man from the 
Lord," the man who should "break the serpent's 
head." Neither the discharge of present duties, nor 
the exercise of right affections, nor a substantial 
preparation for taking a part in the glory that is to 
be revealed, is perhaps at all necessarily connected 
with just anticipations of the unknown futurity. 
Thus, when the infant wakes into the light of this 
world, every organ presently assumes its destined 
function, : the heaving bosom confesses the fitness of 
the material it inhales to support the new style of 
existence ; and the senses admit the first impres- 
sions of the external world with a sort of anticipated 
familiarity ; and though utterly untaught in the 
scenes upon which it has so suddenly entered, and 
inexperienced in the orders of the place where it 
must ere long act its part, yet it is truly " meet to 
be a partaker of the inheritance" of life. And thus, 
too, a real meetness for his birth into the future life 
may belong to the Christian, though he be utterly 
ignorant of its circumstances and conditions. But 



118 THE ENTHUSIASM OF 

the functions of that new life have been long in a 
hidden play of preparation for full activity. He 
has waited in the coil of mortality only for the 
moment when he should inspire the ether of the 
upper world, and behold the light of eternal day, 
and hear the voices of new companions, and taste 
of the immortal fruit, and drink of the river of life ; 
and then, after perhaps a short season of nursing in 
the arms of the elder members of the family above, 
he will take his place in the service and orders of 
the heavenly house ; nor ever have room to regret 
the ignorances of his mortal state. 

The study of those parts of Scripture which relate 
to futurity should therefore be undertaken with zeal, 
inspired by a reasonable hope of successful research ; 
and at the same time with the modesty and resigna- 
tion which must spring from a not unreasonable sup- 
position that all such researches may be fruitless. 
So long as this modesty is preserved, there will be 
no danger of enthusiastic excitements, whatever may 
be the opinions which we are led to entertain; 

It must be evident to every calm mind, that the 
discussion of questions confessedly so obscure, and 
upon which the evidence of Scripture is limited and 
of uncertain explication, is ordinarily improper to 
the pulpit. The several points of the catholic faith 
afford themes enough for public instruction. But 
matters of learned debate are extraneous to that 
faith : they are no ingredients in the bread of life, 
which is the only article committed to the hands of 
the teacher for distribution among the multitude. 
What are the private and hypothetical opinions of a 



PROPHETIC INTERPRETATION. 119 

public functionary to those whom he is to teach the 
principles of the common Christianity ? And if 
these doubtful opinions implicate inquiries which 
the unlearned can never prosecute, a species of im- 
position is implied in the attempt to urge them upon 
simple hearers. It is truly a sorry triumph that he 
obtains who wins by declamation and violence the 
voices of a crowd in favor of opinions which men 
of learning and modesty neither defend nor impugn 
but with diffidence. The press is the proper organ 
of abstruse controversy. 



SECTION VI. 

ENTHUSIASTIC PERVERSIONS OF THE DOCTRINE OF 
A PARTICULAR PROVIDENCE. 

No species of enthusiasm, perhaps, is more exten- 
sively prevalent, and certainly none clings more 
tenaciously to the mind that has once entertained it, 
and none produces more practical mischief, than 
that which is founded on an abuse of the doctrine 
of a particular Providence. It is by the fortuities 
of life that the religious enthusiast is deluded. 
Chance, under a guise stolen from piety, is his di- 
vinity. He believes, and he believes justly, that 
every seeming fortuity is under the absolute control 
of the divine hand ; but in virtue of the peculiar 
interest he supposes himself to have on high, he is 
tempted to think that these contingencies are very 
much at his command. This belief naturally in- 
clines him to pay more regard to the unusual, than 
to the common course of events. In contemplating 
God as the disposer of chances, he becomes forgetful 
of him who is the governor of the world by known 
and permanent laws. All the honor which he does 
to one of the divine attributes, is in fact stolen from 
the reverence due to another; but he should re- 



DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 121 

member that " the Lord abhorreth robbery for of- 
fering." 

A propensity to look more to chance than to 
probability is known invariably to debilitate the 
reasoning faculty, as well as to vitiate the moral 
sentiments ; and these constant effects are more of- 
ten aggravated than mitigated by the accession of 
religious sentiments. The illusions of hope then as- 
sume a tone of authority which effectually silences 
the whispers of common sense ; and the imagination, 
more highly stimulated than when it fed only on 
things of earth, boldly makes a prey of the divine 
power and goodness, to the utter subversion of 
humble piety. A sanguine temper, quickened by 
perverted notions of religion, easily impels a man to 
believe that he is privileged or skilled to penetrate 
the intentions of Providence towards himself; and 
the anticipations he forms on this ground acquire so 
much consistency by being perpetually handled, that 
he deems them to form a much more certain rule of 
conduct than he could derive from the forecastings 
of prudence, or even from the dictates of morality. 

Delusions of this kind are the real sources of 
many of those sad delinquencies which so often bring 
reproach upon a profession of religion. The world 
loves to call the offender a villain ; but in fact he 
was not worse than an enthusiast. He who, in 
conducting the daily affairs of life, has acquired the 
settled habit of calculating rather upon what is 
possible than upon what is probable, naturally slides 
into the mischievous error of paying court to For- 
tune, rather than to Virtue ; nor will his integrity 
6 



122 ABUSES OP THE 

or his principles of honor be at all strengthened by 
the mere metonymy of calling Fortune — Providence. 
It is easy to fix the eye upon the clouds in expect a* 
tion of help from above with so much intentness 
that the tables of right and wrong, which stand 
before us, shall scarcely be seen. This very expec- 
tation is a contempt of prudence ; and it is not often 
seen that those who slight Prudence, pay much 
regard to her sister — Probity. 

Or if consequences so serious do not follow from 
the notion that the fortuities of life are an available 
fund at the disposal of the favorite of heaven, yet 
this belief can hardly fail to spread an infection 
of sloth and presumption through the character. 
The enthusiast will certainly be remiss and dilatory 
in arduous and laborious duties. Hope, which is the 
incentive to exertion in well-ordered and energetic 
minds, slackens every effort if the understanding be 
crazed. The wheel of toil stands still while the 
devotee implores assistance from above. Or if he 
possesses more of activity, the same false principle 
prompts him to engage in enterprises from which, if 
the expected contingent to be furnished by " Pro- 
vidence," be deducted, scarcely a shred of fair prob- 
ability remains to recommend the scheme. 

If the course of events in human life were as 
constant and uniform as the phenomena of the mate- 
rial world, none but madmen would build their hopes 
upon the irregularities by which it is diversified. 
Nor would the enthusiast do so if he gave heed to 
the principles that impose order upon the apparent 
chaos of fortuities from which the many- colored 



DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 123 

line of human life is spun. To expose, then, tne error 
of those who, on pretext of faith in providence, build 
presumptuous expectations upon the throws of for- 
tune, we must analyse the confused mass of contin- 
gences to which human life is liable. This analysis 
leaves the folly and impropriety of the enthusiast 
without excuse. 

Any one who recalls to his recollection the inci- 
dents, great and small, that have filled up the days 
of a year past, will find it easy to divide them into 
two classes, of which the first, and the larger, com- 
prises those events which common sense and expe- 
rience might have enabled him to anticipate, and 
which, if he were wise, he did actually anticipate, so 
far as was necessary for the regulation of his con- 
duct. The ground of such calculations of futurity 
is nothing else than the uniform course of events in 
the material world, and the permanent principles of 
human nature, and the established order of the social 
system: for all these, though confessedly liable to 
many interruptions, are yet so far constant as to 
afford, on the whole, a safe rule of calculation. If 
there were no such uniformity in the course of 
events, the active and reasoning faculties of man 
would be of no avail to him ; for the exercise of 
them might as probably be ruinous as serviceable 
In the whirl of such a supposed anarchy of nature, 
an intelligent agent must refrain from every move- 
ment, and resign himself to be borne along by the 
eddies of confusion. But this is not the character of 
the world we inhabit : the connection of physical 



124 ABUSES OF THE 

causes and effects is known and calculable, so that 
the results of human labor are liable to only a small 
deduction on account of occasional irregularities. 
We plant and sow, and lay up stores, and build, and 
construct machines in tranquil hope of the expected 
benefit ; and indeed, if the variations and irregu- 
larities of nature were much greater and more fre- 
quent than they are, or even if disappointment were 
as common as success, the part of wisdom would 
still be the same ; for the laws of nature, though 
never so much broken in upon by incalculable acci- 
dents, would still afford some ground of expectation ; 
and an intelligent agent will always prefer to act on 
even the slenderest hope which reason approves, 
rather than to lie supine in the ruinous wheel- way 
of chance. 

And notwithstanding its many real, and many 
apparent irregularities, there is also a settled order 
of causes and effects in the human system, as well as 
in the material world. The foundation of this settled 
order is, the sameness of human nature in its animal 
intellectual and moral constitution, of which the 
anomalies are never so great as to break up all re- 
semblance to the common pattern. Then those 
conventional modes of thinking and acting which 
sway the conduct of the mass of mankind, strengthen 
the tendency to uniformity, and greatly counteract 
all disturbing causes. Then again the sanctioned 
institutions of society give stability and permanence 
to the order of events, and altogether afford so much 
security in calculating upon the future, that, whoever 
by observation and reflection has become well skilled 



DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 125 

in the ordinary movements of the machinery of life 
may, with confidence and calmness, if not with 
absolute assurance of success, risk his most im- 
portant interests upon the issue of plans wisely 
concerted. 

Skill and sagacity in managing the affairs of com- 
mon life, or wisdom in council and command, is 
nothing else than an extensive and ready knowledge 
of the intricate movements of the great machine of 
the social system ; and the high price which this 
skill and wisdom always bears among men, may 
be held to represent two abstractions; first, the "per- 
plexing Irregularities of the system to which human 
agency is to be conformed ; and then, the real and 
substantial Uniformity of the movements of that sys- 
tem. For it is plain that if there were no perplexing 
irregularities, superior sagacity would be in no re- 
quest ; or, on the other hand, if there were not a real 
constancy in the course of affairs, even the greatest 
sagacity would be found to be of no avail, and there- 
fore would be in no esteem. 

There is then a substantial, if not an immovable 
substratum of causes and effects, upon which, for the 
practical and important purposes of life, calculations 
of futurity may be formed. And this is the basis, 
and this alone, on which a wise man rests his hopes, 
and constructs his plans ; he well knows that his 
fairest hopes may be dissipated, and his best plans 
overthrown ; and yet, though the hurricanes of mis- 
fortune were a thousand times to scatter his labors, 
he would still go on to renew them in conformity 
with the same principles of calculation ; for no 



126 ABUSES OF THE 

other principles are known to him, and the ex- 
tremest caprices of Fortune will never so prevail 
over his constancy as to induce him to do homage 
to Chance. 

The second, and the less numerous class of events 
that make up the course of human life, are those 
which no sagacity could have anticipated ; for 
though in themselves they were only the natural con- 
sequences of common causes, yet those causes were 
either concealed, or remote, and were, therefore, to 
us and our agency the same as if they had been 
absolutely fortuitous. By far the larger proportion 
of these accidents arises from the intricate connec- 
tions of the social system. The thread of every life 
is entangled with other threads beyond all reach of 
calculation, the weal and woe of each depends, by 
innumerable correspondences, upon the will, and 
caprices, and fortune, not merely of the individuals 
of his immediate circle, but upon those of myriads 
of whom he knows nothing. Or, strictly speaking, 
the tie of mutual influence passes, without a break, 
from hand to hand, throughout the human family : 
there is no independence, no insulation, in the lot of 
man ; and therefore there can be no absolute cal- 
culation of future fortunes ; for he whose will or 
caprice is to govern that lot stands, perhaps, at the 
distance of a thousand removes from the subject of 
it, and the atenuated influence winds its way in a 
thousand meanders before it reaches the point of its 
destined operation. 

Both these classes of events are manifestly neces- 



DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 127 

sary to the full development of the faculties of 
human nature. If, for example, there were no con- 
stancy in the events of life, there Avould be no room 
left for rational agency ; and if, on the other hand, 
there were no inconstancy, the operations of the 
reasoning faculty would fall into a mechanical reg- 
ularity, and the imagination and the passions would 
be iron-bound, as by the immobility of fate. It is 
by the admirable combination of tho two principles 
of order and disorder, of uniformity and' variety, of 
certainty and of chance, that the faculties and 
desires are wrought up to their full play of energy 
and vivacity of reason and of feeling. But it is 
especially in connection with the doctrine of Provi- 
dence that we have at present to consider these two 
elements of human life ; and as to the first of them, 
it is evident that the settled order of causes and 
effects, so far as it may be ascertained by observation 
and experience, claims the respect and obedience of 
every intelligent agent ; since it is nothing less than 
the will of the Author of nature, legibly written 
upon the constitution of the world. This will is 
sanctioned by immediate rewards and punishments ; 
health, wealth, prosperity, are the usual consequents 
of obedience ; while sickness, poverty, degradation, 
are the almost certain inflictions that attend a negli- 
gent interpretation, or a presumptuous disregard of 
it. The dictates of prudence are in truth the com- 
mands of God ; and his benevolence is vindicated 
by the fact, that the miseries of life are, to a very 
great extent, attributable to a contempt of those 
commands. 



128 ABUSES OF THE 

But there is a higher government of men, as moral 
and religious beings, which is carried on chiefly by 
means of the fortuities of life. Those unforeseen 
accidents which so often control the lot of men, con- 
stitute a superstratum in the system of human affairs, 
wherein, peculiarly, the Divine Providence holds 
empire for the accomplishment of its special purposes. 
It is from this hidden and inexhaustible mine of 
chances — chances, as we must call them — that the 
Governor of the world draws, with unfathomable 
skill, the materials of his dispensations towards each 
individual of mankind. The world of nature affords 
no instances of complicated and exact contrivance, 
comparable to that which so arranges the vast chaos 
oi contingencies, as to produce, with unerring pre- 
cision, a special order of events adapted to the char- 
acter of every individual of the human family. 
Amid the whirl of myriads of fortuities, the means 
are selected and combined for constructing as many 
independent machineries of moral discipline as there 
are moral agents in the world ; and each apparatus 
is at once complete in itself, and complete as part of 
a universal movement. 

If the special intentions of Providence towards 
individuals were effected by the aid of supernatural 
interpositions, the power and presence of the Su- 
preme Disposer might indeed be more strikingly 
displayed than it is ; but his skill much less. And 
herein especially is manifested the perfection of the 
divine wisdom, that the most surprising conjunc- 
tions of events are brought about by the simplest 
means, and in a manner so perfectly in harmony 



DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 129 

with the ordinary course of human affairs, that the 
hand of the Mover is ever hidden beneath second 
causes, and is descried only by the eye of pious 
affection. This is in fact the great miracle of pro- 
vidence — that no miracles are needed to accomplish 
its purposes. Countless series of events are travel- 
ling on from remote quarters towards the same 
point ; and each series moves in the beaten track of 
natural occurrences ; but their intersection, at the 
very moment in which they meet, shall serve, per- 
haps, to give a new direction to the affairs of an 
empire. The materials of the machinery of Pro- 
vidence are all of common quality ; but their combi- 
nation displays nothing less than infinite skill. 

Having then these two distinguishable classes of 
events before us, namely, those which may be fore- 
known by human sagacity, and those which may 
not ; it is manifest that the former exclusively is 
given to man as the sphere of his labors, and for the 
exercise of his skill ; while the latter is reserved as 
the royal domain of sovereign bounty and infinite 
wisdom. The enthusiast, therefore, who neglects 
and contemns those dictates of common sense 
which are derived from the calculable course of hu- 
man affairs, and founds his plans and expectations 
upon the unknown procedures of Providence, is 
chargeable not merely with folly, but with an im- 
pious intrusion upon the peculiar sphere of the 
divine agency. This impiety is shown in a strong 
light when viewed in connection with those great 
principles which may be not obscurely discerned to 
6* 



130 ABUSES OP THE 

govern the dispensations of Providence towards 
mankind. 

In the divine management of the fortuitous events 
of life, there is, in the first place, visible, some occa- 
sional flashes of that retributive justice, which, in 
the future world, is to obtain its long postponed 
and perfect triumph. There are instances which, 
though not very common, are frequent enough to 
keep alive the salutary fears of mankind, wherein 
vindictive visitations speak articulately in attesta- 
tion of the righteous indignation of God against 
those who do evil. Outrageous villanies, or appall- 
ing profaneness, sometimes draw upon the criminal 
the instant bolt of divine wrath, and in so remark- 
able a manner that the most irreligious minds are 
quelled with a sudden awe, and confess the hand of 
God. And again there is just perceptible, as it 
were, a gleam of divine approbation, displayed in a 
signal rewarding of the righteous, even in the 
present life : a blessing " which maketh rich" rests 
sometimes conspicuously upon the habitation of dis- 
interested and active virtue : " the righteous is as a 
tree planted by the rivers of water : whatsoever he 
doeth, prospers." In these anomalous cases of anti- 
cipated retribution, the punishment or the reward 
does not arrive in the ordinary course of common 
causes; but starts forth suddenly from that store- 
house of fortuities whence the divine providence 
draws its means of government. If the oppressor,' 
by rousing the resentment of mankind, is dragged , 
from the seat of power, and trodden in the dust ; or 



DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 131 

if the villain who "plotteth mischief against his 
neighbor on his bed," is at length caught in his 
own net, and despoiled of his wrongful gains, these 
visitations of justice, though truly retributive, 
belong plainly to the known order of causes and 
effects : they are nothing more than the natural 
issues of the culprit's course ; and therefore do not 
declare the special interference of Heaven. But 
there are instances of another kind, in which the 
ruin of villany or of violence comes speeding as on 
a shaft from above, which, though seemingly shot at 
random, yet hits its victim with a precision and a 
peculiarity that proclaims the unerring hand of 
divine justice. 

In like manner there are remarkable recompenses 
of integrity, of liberality, of kindness to strangers, 
and, most especially, of duty to parents, which arrive 
by means so remote from common probability, and 
yet so simple, that the approbation of him who 
" taketh pleasure in the path of the just," is written 
upon the unexpected boon. There are few family 
histories that would not afford examples of such 
conspicuous retributions. Nevertheless, as they are 
confessedly rare, and administered by rules abso- 
lutely inscrutable to human penetration, there can 
hardly be a more daring impiety than, in particular 
instances, to entertain the expectation of their occur- 
rence. Yet the enthusiast finds it hard to abstain, 
in his own case, from such expectations ; and is 
tempted perpetually to indulge hopes of special 
boons in reward of his services, and is forward and 
ingenious in giving an interpretation that flatten 



132 ABUSES OF THE 

his spiritual vanity to every common favor of provi- 
dence ; the bottles of heaven are never stopped but 
to gratify his taste for fine weather ! A readiness 
to announce the wrath of heaven upon offenders, is 
a presumption which characterizes, not the mere 
enthusiast, but the malign fanatic, and therefore 
comes not properly within our subject ; and yet the 
species of enthusiasm now under consideration is 
very seldom free from some such impious tendency. 

In the divine management of the fortuities of 
life, there may also be very plainly perceived a dis- 
pensation of moral exercise, specifically adapted tc 
the temper and powers of the individual. No one 
can look back upon his own history without meeting 
unquestionable instances of this sort of educational 
adjustment of his lot, effected by means that were 
wholly independent of his own choice or agency. 
The casual meeting with a stranger, or an unex- 
pected interview with a friend ; the accidental post- 
ponement of affairs ; the loss of a letter, a shower, a 
trivial indisposition, the caprice of an associate ; 
these, or similar fortuities, have been the determin- 
ing causes of events, not only important in them- 
selves, but of peculiar significance and use in that 
process of discipline which the character of the in- 
dividual was to undergo. These new currents in 
the course of life proved, in the issue, specifically 
proper for putting in action the latent faculties of 
the mind, or for holding in check its dangerous pro- 
pensities. Whoever is quite unconscious of this 
sort of overruling of his affairs by means of appa 



DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 133 

rent accidents, must be very little addicted to habits 
of intelligent reflection. 

Doubtless every man's choice and conduct deter- 
mine, to a great extent, his lot and occupation ; but 
not seldom, a course of life much better fitted to his 
temper and abilities than the one he would fain 
substitute for it, has, year after year, and in spite of 
his reluctances, fixed his place and employment in 
society ; and this unchosen lot has, if we may so 
speak, been constructed from the floating fragments 
of other men's fortunes, drifted by the accidents of 
wind and tide across the billows of life, till they were 
stranded at the very spot where the individual for 
whom they were destined was ready to receive them. 
By such strong and nicely-fitted movements of the 
machine of Providence it is, that the tasks of life 
are distributed where best they may be performed, 
and its burdens apportioned where best they may be 
sustained. By accidents of birth or connection, the 
bold, the sanguine, the energetic, are led into the 
front of the field of arduous exertion ; while by sim- 
ilar fortuities, quite as often as by choice, the pusil- 
lanimous, the fickle, the faint-hearted, are suffered 
to spend their days under the shelter of ease, and in 
the recesses of domestic tranquillity. 

But who shall profess so to understand his partic- 
ular temper, and so to estimate his talents, as might 
qualify him to anticipate the special dispensations of 
Providence in his own case? Such knowledge, 
surely, every wise man will confess to be " too won- 
derful" for him. To the Supreme Intelligence alone 
it belongs to distribute to every one his lot, and to 



134 ABUSES OP THE 

" fix the bounds" of his abode. Yet there are per- 
sons, whose persuasion of what ought to be their 
place and destiny is so confidently held, that a long 
life of disappointment does not rob them of the fond 
hypotheses of self-love ; and just in proportion to the 
firmness of their faith in a particular providence, will 
be their propensity to quarrel with Heaven, as if it 
debarred them from their right in deferring to re- 
alize the anticipated destiny. Presumption, when it 
takes its commencement in religion, naturally ends 
in impiety. 

Men who look no farther than the present scene, 
may, with less glaring inconsistency, vent their vex- 
ation in accusing the blindness and partiality of fate, 
which has held their eminent talents and their pecu- 
liar merits so long under the veil of obscurity ; but 
those who acknowledge at once a disposing provi- 
dence and a future life, might surely find considera- 
tions proper for imposing silence upon such mur- 
murings of disappointed ambition. Let it be granted 
to a man that his vanity does not deceive him, w T hen 
he complains that adverse fortune has prevented his 
entering the very course upon which nature fitted 
him to shine, and has, with unrelenting severity, 
confined him, year after year, to a drudgery in 
which he was not qualified to win even a common 
measure of success : all this may be true ; but if the 
complainant be a Christian, he cannot find it difficult 
:o admit that this clashing of his fortune with his 
capacities, or his tastes, may have been the very 
exercise necessary to ensure his ultimate welfare. 
Who will deny that the reasons of the divine con 



DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 135 

duct towards those who are in training for an end- 
less course must always lie at an infinite distance 
beyond the range of created vision? Who shall 
venture even to surmise what course of events may 
best foster the germ of an imperishable life ; or who 
conjecture what contraventions of the hopes and in- 
terests of an individual may find their reasons and 
necessity somewhere in the wide universe of con- 
sequences incalculably remote? 

Whether the promise " that all things shall work 
together for good to those who love God," is to be 
accomplished by perpetual sunshine or by incessant 
storms, no one can anticipate in his own case : or 
if any one were excepted, it must be the enthusiast 
himself, who might almost with certainty calculate 
upon receiving a dispensation the very reverse of 
that which it has been the leading error of his life to 
anticipate. He might thus calculate, both because 
his expectations are in themselves exorbitant and 
improbable, and because the presumptuous temper 
from which they spring loudly calls for the rebuke 
of heaven. 

Amid the perplexities which arise from the unex- 
pected events of life, we are not left without suffi- 
cient guidance ; for although, in particular instances, 
the most reasonable calculations are baffled, and the 
best plans subverted, yet there remains in our hands 
the immutable rule of moral rectitude, in an inflexi- 
ble adherence to which we shall avoid what is chiefly 
to be dreaded in calamity — the dismal moanings of 
a wounded conscience. " He that walketh uprightly 



136 ABUSES OF THE 

walketh surely/' even in the path of disaster. Ana 
while, on the one hand, he steadily pursues the track 
which prudence marks out ; and, on the other, listens 
with respectful attention to the dictates of honor and 
probity, he may, without danger of enthusiasm, ask 
and hope for the especial aids of Divine Providence, 
in overruling those events that lie beyond the reach 
of human agency. 

Prayer and calculation are duties never incom- 
patible, never to be disjoined, and never to shackle 
one the other. For while those events only which 
are probable ought to be assumed as the basis of 
plans for futurity, yet, whatever is not manifestly 
impossible, or in a high degree improbable, may law- 
fully be made the object of submissive petition. Few 
persons, and none who have known vicissitudes, can 
look back upon past years without recollecting signal 
occasions on which they have been rescued from the 
impending and apparently inevitable consequences 
of their own misconduct, or imprudence, or want of 
ability, by some extraordinary intervention in the 
very crisis of their fate, or, perhaps, they have been 
placed by accident in circumstances of peril, where 
as it seemed, there remained not a possibility of 
escape. But while the ruin was yet in descent, 
rescue, which it would have been madness to expect, 
came in to preserve life, fortune, or reputation, from 
the imminent destruction. That such conspicuous 
deliverances do actually occur is matter of fact ; nor 
will the Christian endure that they, should be attri- 
buted to any other cause than the special care and 
kindness of his heavenly Father : and yet, as they 



DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 137 

belong to an economy which stretches into eternity 
and as they are not administered on any ascertained 
rule, they can never come within the range of our 
calculations, or be admitted to influence our plans : 
a propensity to indulge such expectations indicates 
infirmity of mind, and is in fact an intrusion upon 
the counsels of infinite wisdom. 

Nevertheless, so long as these extraordinary inter- 
ventions are known to consist with the rules of the 
divine government, they may be contemplated as 
possible without violating the respect that is due to 
its ordinary procedures ; and may, therefore, without 
enthusiasm, be solicited in the hour of peril or per- 
plexity. The gracious " Hearer of prayer," who, 
on past and well-remembered occasions has signally 
given deliverance, may do so again, even when, if 
we think of our own imprudence, we have reason to 
expect nothing less than destruction. What are 
termed by irreligious men ' the fortunate chances of 
life,' will be regarded by the devout mind as con- 
stituting a hidden treasury of boons, held at the 
disposal of a gracious hand for the incitement of 
prayer, and for the reward of humble faith. The 
enthusiast who, in contempt of common sense ana 
of rectitude, presumes upon the existence of this ex- 
traordinary fund, forfeits, by such impiety, his inte- 
rest in its stores. But the prudent and the pious, 
while they labor and calculate in strict conformity to 
the known and ordinary course of events, shall not 
seldom find that, from this very treasury of contin- 
gencies, " God is rich to them that call upon him." 



138 ABUSES OF THE 

In minds of a puny form, whose enthusiasm is 
commonly mingled with some degree of abject super- 
stition, the doctrine of a particular providence is 
liable to be degraded by habitual association with 
trivial and sordid solicitudes. This or that paltry 
wish is gratified, or vulgar care relieved, ' by the 
kindness of providence ;' and thanks are rendered for 
helps, comforts, deliverances, of so mean an order, 
that the respectable language of piety is burlesqued 
by the ludicrous character of the occasion on which 
it is used. The fault in these instances does not 
consist in an error of opinion, as if even the most 
trivial events were not, equally with the most con- 
siderable, under the divine management ; but it is a 
perversion and degradation of feeling which allows 
the mind to be occupied with whatever is frivolous, 
to the exclusion of whatever is important. These 
petty spirits, who draw hourly, from the matters 
of their personal comfort or indulgence, so many 
occasions of prayer and praise, are often seen to be 
insensible to motives of a higher kind : they have no 
perception of the relative magnitude of objects ; no 
sense of proportion ; and they feel little or no interest 
in what does not affect themselves. We ought, how- 
ever, to grant indulgence to the infirmity of the 
feeble ; and if the soul be indeed incapable of expan- 
sion, it is better it should be devout in trifles, than 
not devout at all. Yet these small folks have need 
to be warned of the danger of mistaking the gratu- 
lations of selfishness for the gratitude of piety. 

It is a rare perfection of the intellectual and moral 
faculties which allows all objects great and small, to 



DOOTEINE OF PROVIDENCE 139 

be distinctly perceived, and perceived in their rela- 
tive magnitudes. A soul of this high finish may be 
devout on common occasions without trifling : it 
will gather up the fragments of the divine bounty, 
that " nothing be lost ;" and yet hold its energies 
and its solicitudes free for the embrace of momentous 
cares. If men of expanded intellect, and high feel- 
ing, and great activity, are excused in their neglect 
of small things, this indulgence is founded upon a 
recollection of the contractedness of the human 
mind, even at the best. The forgetfulness of lesser 
matters, which so often belongs to energy of charac- 
ter, is, after all, not a perfection, but a weakness 
and a more complete expansion of mind, a still moie 
vigorous pulse of life, would dispel the torpor of 
which such neglects are the symptoms. 

Thwarted enthusiasm naturally generates impious 
petulance. If we encumber the Providence of God 
with unwarranted expectations, it will be difficult 
not so to murmur under disappointment as those do 
who think themselves defrauded of their right. In 
truth, amidst the sharpness of sudden calamity, or 
the pressure of continued adversity, the most sane 
minds are tempted to indulge repinings which reason, 
not less than piety, utterly condemns. The imputa- 
tion of defective wisdom, or justice, or goodness, to 
the Being of whom we can form no notion apart 
from the idea of absolute knowledge, rectitude, and 
benevolence, is too absurd to need a formal refuta- 
tion ; and yet how often does it survive all the 
rebukes of good sense and religion ! So egregious 



140 ABUSES OF THE 

an error could not find a moment's lodgment in the 
heart, if it did not meet a surface of adhesion where 
presumption has been torn away. The exaggera- 
tions of self-love not quelled, but rather inflated by 
an enthusiastic piety, inspire feelings of personal 
importance so enormous, that even the infinitude of 
the divine attributes is made to shrink down to the 
measure of comparison with man. When illusions 
such as these are rent and scattered, how pitiable is 
the conscious destitution and meanness of the de- 
nuded spirit ! with how cruel a shock does it fall back 
upon its true place in the vast system of providence ! 

Whoever entertains, as every Christian ought, 
a strong and consoling belief of the doctrine of a 
Particular Providence, which cares for the welfare 
of each, should not forget to connect with that belief 
some general notions, at least, of that system of 
Universal Providence which secures individual in- 
terests, consistently with the well-being of the whole. 
Such notions, though very defective, or even in part 
erroneous, may serve first to check presumption, 
and then to impose silence upon those murmurs 
which are its offspring. 

A law of subordination manifestly pervades that 
part of the government of God with which we are 
acquainted, and may fairly be supposed to prevail 
elsewhere. Lesser interests are the component 
parts of greater ; and so closely are the individual 
fates of the human family interwoven, that each 
member, however insignificant he may seem, sus- 
tains a real relationship of influence to the commu- 



DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 14i 

nity. The lot of each must therefore be shapen oy 
reasons drawn from many, and often from remote 
quarters. Yet in effecting this complex combina- 
tion of parts, infinite wisdom prevents any clashing 
of the lesser with the larger movements ; and we 
may feel assured that, on the grounds either of mere 
equity or of beneficence, the dispensations of Prov- 
idence are as compactly perfect towards each indi- 
vidual of mankind as if he were the sole inhabitant 
of an only world. If Heaven, in its condescension, 
were to implead at the bar of human reason, and 
set forth the motives of its dealings towards this 
man or that, these motives might, no doubt, be 
alleged and justified in every particular, without 
making any reference to the intermingled interests 
of other men : and it might be shown that, although 
certain events were in fact followed by consequen- 
ces much more important to others than to the in- 
dividual immediately affected, yet they did in the 
fullest sense belong to the personal discipline of the 
individual, and must have taken place irrespectively 
of those foreign consequences. 

This perfect fitting and finishing of the machinery 
of Providence to individual interests, must be pre- 
mised ; yet it is not less true that, in almost every 
event of life, the remote consequences vastly out- 
weigh the proximate, in actual amount of import- 
ance. Every man prospers, or is overthrown, lives, 
or dies, not for himself; but that he may sustain 
tnose around him, or that he may give them place ; 
and who shall attempt to measure the circle within 
which are comprised these extensive dependences ? 



142 SYSTEM OP 

On principles even of mathematical calculation, 
each individual of the human family may be demon- 
strated to hold in his hand the centre lines of an 
interminable web- work, on which are sustained the 
fortunes of multitudes of his successors. These 
implicated consequences, if summed together, make 
up therefore a weight of human weal or woe that is 
reflected back with an incalculable momentum upon 
the lot of each. Every one is then bound to re- 
member that the personal sufferings or peculiar 
vicissitudes or toils through which he is called to 
pass, are to be estimated and explained only in an 
immeasurably small proportion if his single welfare 
is regarded ; while their full price and value are not 
to be computed unless the drops of the morning dew 
could be numbered. 

Immediate proof of that system of interminable 
connection which binds together the whole human 
family may be obtained by every one who will ex- 
amine the several ingredients of his physical, intel- 
lectual, and social condition ; for he will not find 
one of these circumstances of his lot that is not, in 
its substance or quality, directly an effect or con- 
sequence of the conduct, or character, or constitu- 
tion of his progenitors, and of all with whom he has 
had to do ; if they had been other than they were, 
he must also have been other than he is. And then 
our predecessors must, in like manner, trace the 
qualities of their being to theirs ; thus the linking 
ascends to the common parents of all; and thus 
must it descend, still spreading as it goes, from the 



UNIVERSAL PROVIDENCE. 143 

present to the last generation of the children of 
Adam. 

Nor is this direct and obvious kind of influence 
the only one of which some plain indications are to 
be discerned ; and without at all following the un- 
certain track of adventurous speculation, it may 
fairly be surmised that the same law of interminable 
connection, a law of moral gravitation, stretches 
far beyond the limits of the human family, and 
actually holds in union the great community of in- 
telligent beings. Instances of connection immensely 
remote, and yet very real, might be adduced in 
abundance : the influence of history upon the char- 
acter and conduct of successive generations is of 
this kind. Whatever imparts force or intensity to 
human motives, and by this means actually deter- 
mines the course of life, may assuredly claim for 
itself the title and respect due to an efficient cause, 
and must be deemed to exert an impulsive power 
over the mind. Now the records of history, how 
long soever may have been the line of transmission 
which has brought them to our times, fraught as 
they are with instances applicable to all the occa- 
sions of real life, do thus, in a very perceptible de- 
gree, affect the sentiments and mould the characters 
of mankind ; nor will any one speak slightingly of 
this species of causation who has compared the intel- 
lectual condition of nations rich in history with that 
of a people wholly destitute of the memorials of past 
ages. The story of the courage, or constancy, or 
wisdom of the men of a distant time becomes, in a 
greater or a less decree, a subsidiary cause of the 



j.44 UNIVERSAL PROVIDENCE. 

conduct of the men of each succeeding generation. 
Thus the few individuals in every age to whom it 
has happened to live, and act, and speak under the 
focus of the speculum of history, did actually live, 
and labor, and suffer for the benefit of mankind in 
all future times ; just as truly as a father toils for 
the advantage of his family. And if the whole 
amount of the influence which has in fact flowed 
from the example of the wise, the brave, and the 
good, could have been placed in prophetic vision 
before them, while in the midst of their arduous 
course, would not these worthies contentedly and 
gladly have purchased so immense a wealth of moral 
power at the price of their personal sufferings ? 

Here, then, as a plain matter of fact, is an instance 
of boundless causation, connecting certain individuals 
with myriads of their species, from age to age, and 
forever. It is an instance, we say, and not more : 
for the voice of history is but a preluding flourish to 
that voluminous revelation which shall be made, in 
the great day of consummation, of all that has been 
acted and suffered upon earth's surface. In that 
day, when the books of universal history are opened 
and read, it shall doubtless be found that no particle 
has been lost o£ aught that might serve to authenti- 
cate the maxims of eternal wisdom, or to vindicate 
the righteous government of God. And all shall be 
written anew, as " with a pen of iron on the rock 
forever," and shall stand forth as an imperishable 
lesson of warning or incitement to after- comers on 
the theatre of existence. 

Whatever degree of solidity may be attributed U 



MVSTERIOUSNESS OF PROVIDENCE. 145 

considerations of this kind, they are at least suffi- 
ciently supported by analogies to give them a 
decided advantage over those petulant cavils where- 
with we are prone to arraign the particular dispen- 
sations of Providence towards ourselves. Are such 
dispensations, when seen in small portions, mysteri- 
ous and perplexing ? How can they be otherwise 
if, in their completed measurements, they are to 
spread over the creation, and in their issues, to en- 
dure forever ? 

The common phrase — " a mysterious dispensation 
of Providence," when used as most often it is, con- 
tains the very substance of enthusiasm ; and yet, it 
must be confessed, of a venial enthusiasm ; for the 
occasions which draw it forth are of a kind that may 
be admitted to palliate a hasty impropriety of lan- 
guage. To call any event that does not break in upon 
the known and established order of natural causes — 
mysterious, is virtually to assume a previous knowl- 
edge of the intentions of the Supreme Ruler ; for it 
is to say that his proceedings have baffled our calcu- 
lations ; and in fact it is only when we have formed 
anticipations of what ought to have been the course 
of events that we are tempted by sudden reverses 
to employ so improperly this indefinite expression. 
All the dispensations of Divine Providence, taken 
together, may, with perfect propriety, be termed 
mysterious ; since all alike are governed by reasons 
that are hidden and inscrutable : but it is the height 
of presumption so to designate some of them in dis- 
tinction from others. For example ; a man emi- 

m 7 



146 MYSTEEIOUSNESS OF PROVIDENCE. 

nently gifted by nature for important and peculiar 
services, and trained to perform them by a long and 
arduous discipline, and now just entering upon the 
course of successful beneficence, and perhaps actually 
holding in his hand the welfare of a family or a 
province, or an empire, is suddenly smitten to the 
earth by disease or accident. Sad ruin of a rare 
machinery of intellectual and moral power ! But 
while the thoughtless may deplore for an hour the 
irreparable loss they have sustained, the thoughtful 
few muse rather than weep ; and in order to conceal 
from themselves the irreverence of their own repin- 
ings, exclaim — ' How mysterious are the ways of 
heaven !' Yes ; but in the present instance, what 
is mysterious ? Not that human life should at all 
periods be liable to disease, or the human frame be 
always vulnerable ; for these are conditions insepa- 
rable from the present constitution of our nature ; 
and it is clear that nothing less than a perpetual 
miracle could exempt any one class of mankind from 
the common contingencies of physical life. The 
supposition of any such constant and manifest inter- 
position, rendering a certain description of persons 
intactible by harm, would be impious as well as 
absurd. Nothing could suggest to a sane mind an 
idea of this sort, if it did not gain admittance in the 
train of those eager forecastings of the ways of God 
in which persons much addicted to religious medi- 
tation are prone to indulge, and which, though they 
may afford pleasure for a moment, are usually pur- 
chased at the cost of relapses into gloomy, or worse 
than gloomy discontents. 



IDEA OF TFIE FUTURE LIFE. 147 

There is a striking incongruity in the fact that the 
propensity to apply the equivocal term, mysterious, 
to sudden and afflictive events, Jike the one just 
specified, is indulged almost exclusively by the very 
persons whose professed principles furnish them 
with a sufficient explanation of such dispensations. 
If the present state were thought to comprise the 
beginning and the end of the human system, and if, 
at the same time, this system be attributed to the 
Supreme Intelligence, then indeed the prodigious 
waste and destruction which is continually taking 
place, not only of the germs of life, but of the rarest 
and of the most excellent specimens of divine art, is 
a solecism that must baffle every attempt at explana- 
tion. Let then the deist, who knows of nothing be- 
yond death, talk of the mysteries of Providence ; but 
let not the Christian, who is taught to think little of 
the present, and much of the future, use language 
of this sort. 

A popular misunderstanding of the language of 
Scripture relative to the future state, has, perhaps, 
had great influence in enhancing the gloom and 
perplexity with which Christians are wont to think 
and speak of sudden and afflictive visitations of 
Providence. 

Heaven — the ultimate and perfected condition of 
human nature, is thought of amidst the toils of life, 
as an elysium of quiescent bliss, exempt, if not 
from action, at least from the necessity of action. 
Meanwhile every one feels that the ruling tendency 
and the uniform intention of all the arrangements of 



148 IDEA OF THE 

the present state, and of almost all its casualties, is 
to generate and to cherish habits of strenuous exer- 
tion. Inertness, not less than vice, stamps upon its 
victim the seal of perdition. The whole order of 
nature, and all the institutions of societ}^, and the 
ordinary course of events, and the explicit will of 
God, as declared in his word, concur in opposing 
that propensity to rest which belongs to the human 
mind, and combine to necessitate submission to the 
hard, yet salutary conditions under which alone the 
most extreme evils may be held in abeyance, and 
any degree of happiness enjoyed. A task and duty 
is to be fulfilled, in discharging which the want of 
energy is punished even more immediately and more 
severely than the want of virtuous motives. 

Here, then, is visible a great and serious incon- 
gruity between matter of fact, and the common an- 
ticipations of the future state : it deserves inquiry, 
therefore, whether these anticipations are really 
founded on the evidence of Scripture ; or whether 
they are not rather the mere suggestions of a sickly 
spiritual luxuriousness. This is not the place for 
pursuing such an inquiry ; but it may be observed, 
in passing, that those glimpses of the supernal world 
which we catch from the Scriptures have in them, 
certainly, quite as much of the character of history 
as of poetry, and impart the idea — not that there is 
less of business in heaven than on earth, but more. 
Unquestionably, the felicity of those beings of a 
higher order, to whose agency frequent allusions 
are made by the inspired writers, is not incompati- 
ble with the assiduities of a strenuous ministry, to 



FUTURE LIFE. 149 

be discharged, according to the best ability of each, 
in actual and arduous contention with formidable, 
and perhaps sometimes successful opposition. A 
poetic notion of angelic agency, having in it no- 
thing substantial, nothing necessary, nothing diffi- 
cult, and which consists only in an unreal show of 
action and movement, and in which the result would 
be precisely the same apart from the accompaniment 
of a swarm of butterfly youths, must be spurned by 
reason, as it is unwarranted by Scripture. Script- 
ure does not affirm or imply that the plenitude of 
divine power is at all in more immediate exercise in 
the higher world than in this : on the contrary, the 
revelation so distinctly made of a countless array of 
intelligent and vigorous agents, designated usually 
by an epithet of martial signification, precludes such 
an idea. Why a commission of subalterns ? why an 
attendance of celestials upon the flight of the bolt of 
omnipotence? That bolt, when actually flung, 
needs no coadjutor ! 

But if there be a real and necessary, not merely 
a shadowy agency in heaven as well as on earth ; 
and if human nature is destined to act its part in 
such an economy, then its constitution, and the se- 
vere training it undergoes, are at once explained; 
and then, also, the removal of individuals in the very 
prime of their fitness for useful labor ceases to be im- 
penetrably mysterious. This excellent mechanism 
of matter and mind, which, beyond any other of his 
works, declares the wisdom of the Creator, and 
which, under his guidance, is now passing the sea- 
son of its first preparation, shall stand up anew from 



150 IDEA OF THE 

the dust of dissolution, and then, with freshened 
powers, and with a store of hard-earned practical 
wisdom for its guidance, shall essay new labors — 
we say not perplexities and perils — in the service of 
God, who by such instruments chooses to accom- 
plish his designs of beneficence. That so prodigious 
a waste of the highest qualities should take place as 
is implied in the notions which many Christians en- 
tertain of the future state, is indeed hard to imagine. 
The mind of man, formed as it is to be more te- 
nacious of its active habits than even of its moral 
dispositions, is, in the present state, trained (often at 
an immense cost of suffering) to the exercise of skill, 
of forethought, of courage, of patience ; and ought 
it not to be inferred, unless positive evidence contra- 
dicts the supposition, that this system of education 
bears some relation of fitness to the state for which 
it is an initiation ? Shall not the very same quali- 
ties which here are so sedulously fashioned and fin- 
ished, be actually needed and used in that future 
world of perfection ? Surely the idea is inadmissi- 
ble that an instrument wrought up, at so much ex- 
pense, to a polished fitness for service, is destined to 
be suspended forever on the palace walls of heaven, 
as a glittering bauble, no more to make proof of its 
temper ! 

A pious, but needless jealousy, lest the honor due 
to him " who worketh all in all " should be in any 
degree compromised, has perhaps had influence 
in concealing from the eyes of Christians the im- ; 
portance attributed in the Scriptures to subordinate 
agency ; and thus, by a natural consequence, has im 



FUTURE LIFE. 151 

poverished and enfeebled our ideas of the heavenly 
state. But assuredly it is only while encompassed 
by the dimness and errors of the present life that 
there can be any danger of attributing to the creat- 
ure the glory due to the Creator. When once with 
open eye that " excellent glory" has been contem- 
plated, then shall it be understood that the divine 
wisdom is incomparably more honored by the skil- 
ful and faithful performances, and by the cheerful 
toils of agents who have been fashioned and fitted 
for service, than it could be by the bare exertions of 
irresistible power : and then, when the absolute de- 
pendence of creatures is thoroughly felt, may the 
beautiful orders of the heavenly hierarchy — rising, 
and still rising " towards perfection — be seen and 
admired without hazard of forgetting him who 
alone is absolutely perfect, and who is the only 
fountain and first cause of whatever is excellent. 

The Scriptures do indeed most explicitly declare, 
not only that virtue will be inamissible in heaven, 
but that its happiness will be unalloyed by fear, or 
pain, or want. But the mental associations formed 
in the present state make it so difficult to disjoin the 
idea of suffering and of sorrow from that of labor, 
and of arduous and difficult achievement, that we 
are prone to exclude action, as well as pain, from our 
idea of the future blessedness. Yet assuredly these 
notions may be separated ; and if it be possible to 
imagine a perfect freedom from selfish solicitudes, a 
perfect acquiescence in the will, and a perfect confi- ' 
dence in the wisdom, power, and goodness of God, 
then also may we conceive of toils without sadness, 



152 IDEA OF THE FUTURE LIFE. 

of perplexities without perturbations, and of difficult 
or perilous service, without despondency or fear 
The true felicity of beings furnished with mora\ 
sensibilities, must consist in the full play of- the 
emotions of love, fixed on the centre of good ; and 
this kind of happiness is unquestionably compatible 
with any external condition not positively painful : 
perhaps even another step might be taken ; but our 
argument does not need it. Yet it should be re- 
membered, that, in many signal and well-attested 
instances the fervor of the religious affections has 
almost or entirely obliterated the consciousness of 
physical suffering, and has proved its power to van- 
quish every inferior emotion, and to fill the heart 
with heaven, even amid the utmost intensities of 
pain. Much more, then, may these affections, when 
freed from every shackle, when invigorated by an 
assured possession of endless life, and when height- 
ened by the immediate vision of the supreme excel- 
lence, yield a fulness of joy, consistently with many 
vicissitudes of external position. 

Considerations such as these, if at all borne out by 
evidence of Scripture, may properly have place in 
connection with the topic of this section ; for it is 
evident that the harassing perplexities which arise 
from the present dispensations of Providence might 
be greatly relieved by habitually entertaining antici- 
pations of the future state somewhat less imbecile 
and luxurious than those commonly admitted by 
Christians. 



SECTION VII. 

ENTHUSIASM OF BENEFICENCE. 

To say that the principle of disinterested benevo- 
lence had never been known among men before the 
publication of Christianity would be an exagger- 
ation ; — an exaggeration very similar to that of 
affirming that the doctrine of immortality was new 
to mankind when taught by our Lord. In truth, 
the one had, in every age, been imperfectly prac- 
tised, and the other dimly supposed ; yet neither 
the one principle nor the other existed in sufficient 
strength to be the source of any very substantial 
benefit to mankind. But Christ, while he emphati- 
cally " brought life and immortality to light," and so 
claimed to be the Author of hope for man, did also 
with such effect lay the hand of his healing power 
upon the human heart, long palsied by sensualities 
and selfishness, that it has ever since shed forth a 
fountain of active kindness, largely available for the 
relief of want and misery. 

As a matter of history, unquestionable and con- 
spicuous, Christianity has, in every age, fed the 
hungry, and clothed the naked, and redeemed the 
captive, and visited the sick. It has put to shame 
7* 



154 MOTIVES OP 

the atrocities of the ancient popular amusements, 
and has annihilated sanguinary rites, and has brought 
slavery into disesteem and disuse, and has abolished 
excruciating punishments : it has even softened the 
ferocity of war ; and, in a word, is seen constantly 
at work, edging away oppressions, and moving on 
towards the perfect triumph which avowedly it med- 
itates — that of removing from the earth every woe 
which the inconsideration, or the selfishness, or the 
malignancy of man inflicts upon his fellows. 

It remains, then, to ask, By what special means has 
Christianity effected these ameliorations ? and it will 
be found, that the power and success of that new 
principle of benevolence which is taught in the 
Scriptures, are not more remarkable than are its 
constitution and its ingredients. Christian philan- 
thropy, though it takes up among its elements the 
native benevolence of the human heart, is a com- 
pound principle, essentially differing from the spon- 
taneous sympathies of our nature. Now, as this 
new and composite benevolence has, by a trial of 
eighteen centuries, and under every imaginable diver- 
sity of circumstance, proved its practical efficiency, 
and its immense superiority over the crude element- 
ary principle of mere kindness, it would be a viola- 
tion of the acknowledged methods of modern science 
to adhere pertinaciously to the old and inefficient 
element, and to contemn the improved principle. 
All we have to do on an occasion wherein the wel- 
fare of our fellows is so deeply interested, is to take 
Care that our own benevolence, and the benevolence 
which we recommend to others, is of the true and 



CHRISTIAN PHILANTHROPY. 155 

genuine sort ; in other words, that it is Christian. 
If, as every one would profess, we desire to live, not 
for selfish pleasure, but to promote the happiness of 
others, if we would become, not idle well-wishers to 
our species, not closet philanthropists, dreaming of 
impracticable reforms, and grudging the cost of any 
effective relief, but real benefactors to mankind, we 
must take up the lessons of New Testament philan- 
thropy, just as they lie on the page before us, and 
without imagining simpler methods, follow humbly 
in the track of experience. By this Book alone have 
men been effectively taught to do good. 

A low rate of activity, prompted merely by the 
spontaneous kindness of the heart, may easily take 
place without incurring the danger of enthusiastical 
excesses ; but how is enough of moral movement 
to be obtained for giving impulse to a course of 
arduous and perilous labors such as the woes of 
mankind often call for, and yet without generating 
the extravagances of a false excitement ? This is a 
problem solved only by the Christian scheme, and 
in briefly enumerating the peculiarities of the benev- 
olence which it inspires, we shall not fail to catch a 
glimpse, at least, of that profound skill which makes 
provision, on the one side against inertness and sel- 
fishness, and on the other against enthusiasm. 

The peculiarities of Christian philanthropy are 
such as these : it is vicarious, obligatory, reward- 
able, subordinate to an efficient agency, and it is an 
expression of grateful love. 

I. That great principle of vicarious suffering 



156 MOTIVES OF 

which forms the centre of Christianity, spreads itself 
through the subordinate parts of the system, and is 
the pervading, if not the invariable law of Christian 
beneficence. 

The spontaneous sympathies of human nature, 
when they are vigorous enough to produce the fruits 
of charity, rest on an expectation of an opposite 
kind ; for we first seek, to dispel from our own 
bosoms the uneasy sensation of pity ; then look for 
the gratitude of the wretch we have solaced, and 
for the approbation of spectators ; and then take a 
sweet after-draught of self-complacency. But the 
Christian virtue of beneficence stands altogether on 
another ground ; and its doctrine is this, that who- 
ever would remedy misery must himself suffer ; and 
that the pains of the vicarious benefactor are gene- 
rally to bear proportion to the extent or malignity 
Df the evils he labors to remove : so that, while the 
philanthropist who undertakes the cure only of the 
transient ills of the present life, may encounter no 
greater amount of toils or discouragements than 
are amply recompensed by the immediate gratifica- 
tions of successful benevolence, he who, with a due 
sense of the greatness of the enterprise, devotes 
himself to the removal of the moral wretchedness 
in which human nature is involved, will find that 
the sad quality of these deeper woes is in a manner 
reflected back upon himself; and that to touch the 
substantial miseries of degenerate man is to come 
within the infection of infinite sorrow. 

And this is the law of success in the Christian min- 
istry — that highest work of philanthropy. Every 



CHRISTIAN PHILANTHROPY. 157 

right-minded and heaven-commissioned minister of 
religion is " baptized with the baptism wherewith 
his Lord was baptized." In an inferior, yet a real 
sense, he is, like his Lord, a vicarious person, and 
has freely undergone a suretyship for the immortal 
welfare of his fellow-men. He has charged himself 
with a responsibility that can never be absolutely 
acquitted while any power of exertion or faculty 
of endurance is held back from the service. The 
interests which rest in his hand, and depend on his 
skill and fidelity — depend, as truly as if divine 
agency had no part in the issue — are as momentous 
as infinity can make them ; nor are they to be pro- 
moted without a willingness to do and to bear the 
utmost of which humanity is capable. Although 
the servant of Christ be not unconditionally re- 
sponsible for the happy result of his labors, he is 
clearly bound, both by the terms of his engagement 
and the very quality of the work, to surrender 
whatever he may possess that has in it a virtue to 
purchase success ; and he knows that, by the great 
law of the spiritual world, the suffering of a sub- 
stitute enters into the procedures of redemption. 

He who " took our sorrows and bore our griefs," 
left, for the instruction of his servants, a perfect 
model of what should ordinarily be a life of bene- 
ficence. Every circumstance of privation, of dis- 
couragement, of insult, of deadly hostility, which 
naturally fell in the way of a ministry like his, 
exercised among a people profligate, malignant, 
and fanatical, was endured by him as submissively 



V 



158 MOTIVES OF 

as if no extraordinary powers of relief or defence 
had been at his disposal. 

On the very same conditions of unmitigated toil 
and suffering he consigned the publication of his 
religion to his apostles : " Ye shall be hated of all 
nations for my name's sake : Whosoever killeth you 
shall think that he doeth God service : Behold, I 
send you forth as sheep among wolves.' , Though 
endowed with an opulence of supernatural power 
for the attestation of their commission, the apostles 
possessed none for the alleviation of their own 
distresses ; none which might tend to generate a 
personal enthusiasm by leading them to think that 
they, as individuals, were the darlings of Heaven. 
And in fact, they daily found themselves, even 
while wielding the arm of omnipotence, exposed 
to the extremest pressures of want, to pain, to 
destitution, to contempt. " Even unto this present 
hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, 
and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling 
place." Such was the deplorable lot, such to his 
last year of houseless wanderings, houseless excep 
when a dungeon was his home, of the most honored 
of Heaven's agents on earth. Such was the life of 
the most successful of all philanthropists ! 

Nor have the conditions of eminent service been 
relaxed : the value of souls is not lowered ; and as 
the "sacrifice once offered" for the sins of the 
world remains in undiminished efficacy, so, in the 
process of diffusing the infinite benefit, the rule 
originally established continues in force ; and al- 
though reasons drawn from the diversity of character 



CHRISTIAN PHILANTHROPY. 159 

and of natural strength, among those who are the 
servants of God, may occasion great apparent dif- 
ferences in the amount of suffering severally endured 
by them, it is always true that the path of Christian 
beneficence is more beset than the common walks 
of life with disheartening reverses. Whoever freely 
takes up the cause of the wretched, is left to feel the 
grievous pressure of the burden. The frustration 
of his plans by the obstinate folly of those whom he 
would fain serve, the apathy, the remissness, or the 
sinister oppositions of professed coadjutors, the dan- 
gerous hostility of profligate power, and worse than 
all, the secret misgivings of an exhausted spirit ; 
these, and whatever other instruments of torture 
Disappointment may hold in her hand or have in 
reserve, are the furniture of the theatre on which 
the favorite virtue of Heaven is to pass its trial. 

But this law of vicarious charity is altogether 
opposed to the expectations of inexperienced and 
ardent minds. Among the few who devote them- 
selves zealously to the service of mankind, a large 
proportion derive their activity from that consti- 
tutional fervor which is the physical cause of en- 
thusiasm. In truth, a propensity rather to indulge 
the illusions of hope, than to calculate probabilities, 
may seem almost a necessary qualification for those 
who, in this world of abounding evil, are to devise 
the means of checking its triumphs. To raise fallen 
humanity from its degradation, to rescue the op- 
pressed, to deliver the needy, to save the lost, are | 
enterprises so little recommended, for the most part, 
by a fair promise of success, that few will engage 



160 MOTIVES OF 

in them but those who, by a happy infirmity of the 
reasoning faculty, are prone to hope where cautious 
men despond. 

Thus furnished for their work by a constitutional 
contempt of frigid prudence, and engaged cordially 
in services which seem to give them a peculiar in- 
terest in the favor of Heaven, it is only natural that 
benevolent enthusiasts should cherish secret, if not 
avowed hopes, of extraordinary aids, and of interpo- 
sitions of a kind not compatible with the constitu- 
tion of the present state, and not warranted by 
promise of Scripture. Or if the kind-hearted vis- 
ionary neither asks nor expects any peculiar pro- 
tection of his person, nor any exemption from the 
common hazards and ills of life, he yet clings with 
fond pertinacity to the hope of a semi-miraculous 
interference on those occasions in which the work, 
rather than the agent, is in peril. Even the gen- 
uineness of his benevolence leads the amiable en- 
thusiast into this error. To achieve the good he 
has designed does indeed occupy all his heart, to 
the exclusion of every selfish thought : what price of 
personal suffering would he not pay, might he so pur- 
chase the needful miracle of help ! How piercing, 
then, is the anguish of his soul when that help is 
withheld ; when his fair hopes and fair designs are 
overthrown by a hostility that might have been 
restrained, or by a casualty that might have been 
diverted ! 

Few, perhaps, who suffer chagrins like this, alto- 
gether avoid a relapse into religious— we ought to 
say, irreligious— despondency. The first fault, that 



CHRISTIAN PHILANTHROPY. 161 

of misunderstanding the unalterable rules of the 
divine government, is followed by a worse, that of 
fretting against them. When the sharpness of dis- 
appointment disperses enthusiasm, the whole moral 
constitution often becomes infected with the gall of 
discontent. Querulous regrets take the place of 
active zeal ; and at length vexation, much more than 
a real exhaustion of strength, renders the once la- 
borious philanthropist "weary in well doing." 

And yet, not seldom, a happy renovation of mo- 
tives takes place in consequence of the very failures 
to which the enthusiast has exposed himself. Be- 
nevolent enterprises were commenced, perhaps, in 
all the fervor of exorbitant hopes ; the course of 
nature was to be diverted, and a new order of 
things to take place, in which what human efforts 
failed to accomplish should be achieved by the ready 
aid of Heaven. But Disappointment, as merciless 
to the venial errors of the good, as to the mis- 
chievous plots of the wicked, scatters the project in 
a moment. Then the selfish, and the inert, exult ; 
and the half- wise pick up fragments from the deso- 
lation, wherewith to patch their favorite maxims of 
frigid prudence with new proofs in point ! Mean- 
while, by grace given from above in the hour of 
despondency, the enthusiast gains a portion of true 
wisdom from defeat. Though robbed of his fondly- 
cherished hopes, he has not been stripped of his 
sympathies, and these soon prompt him to begin 
anew his labors, on principles of a more substantial 
sort. Warned not again to expect miraculous or 
extraordinary aids to supply the want of caution 



162 MOTIVES OF 

he consults Prudence with even a religious scrupu- 
losity ; for he has learned to think her voice, if not 
misunderstood, to be in fact the voice of God. And 
now he avenges himself upon Disappointment, by 
abstaining almost from hope. A sense of respon- 
sibility which quells physical excitement, is his 
strength. He relies indeed upon the divine aid ; 
yet not for extraordinary interpositions, but for 
grace to be faithful. Thus, better furnished for 
arduous exertion, a degree of substantial success is 
granted to his renewed toils and prayers. And 
while the indolent, and the over-cautious, and the 
cold-hearted, remain what they were ; or have be- 
come more inert, more timid, and more selfish than 
before, the subject of their self-complacent pity has 
not only accomplished some important service for 
mankind, but has himself acquired a temper which 
fits him to take rank among the thrones and do- 
minions of the upper world. 

II. Christian philanthropy is obligatory. 

Natural benevolence is prone to claim the liberty 
and the merit that belong to pure spontaniety, and 
spurns the idea of duty or necessity. This claim 
might be allowed if the free emotions of kindness 
were sufficiently common, and sufficiently vigorous, 
to meet the large and constant demand of want and 
misery. But the contrary is the fact ; and if it 
were not that an authoritative requisition, backed 
by the most solemn sanctions, laid its hand upon the 
sources of eleemosynary aid, the revenues of mercy 
would be slender indeed. Even the few who act 



CHRISTIAN PHILANTHROPY. 163 

from the impulse of the noblest motives, are urged 
on and sustained in their course of beneficence by a 
latent recollection that, though they move freely in 
advancing, they have no real liberty to draw back. 
If the entire amount of advantage which has accrued 
to the necessitous from the influence of Christianity 
could be computed, it would, no doubt, be found, 
that by far the larger share has been contributed, 
not by the few who might have done the same with- 
out impulsion, but by the many whose selfishness 
could never have been broken up except by the 
most peremptory appeals. To ensure, therefore, its 
large purpose of good- will to man, the law of Christ 
spreads out its claims very far beyond the circle of 
mere pity, or natural kindness ; and in the most ab- 
solute terms demands, for the use of the poor, the 
ignorant, the wretched, (and demands from every 
one who names the name of Christ) the whole resi- 
due of talent, wealth, time, that may remain after 
primary claims have been satisfied. On this ground, 
when the zeal of self-denying benevolence has laid 
down its last mite, it does not deem itself to have 
exceeded the extent of Christian duty ; but cheer- 
fully assents to that rule of computing service which 
affirms that, " when we have done all, we are un- 
profitable servants ; having performed only what 
we were commanded." 

Manifestly, for the purpose of giving the highest 
possible force and solemnity to that sense of obliga- 
tion which impels the Christian to abound in every 
good work, the ostensible proof of religious sincerity, 
to be adduced in the momentous procedure's of the 



164 MOTIVES OF 

last judgment, is made to consist in the fact of a life 
of beneficence. Those, and those only, shall inherit 
the prepared blessedness, who shall be found to have 
nourished, and clothed, and visited the Lord in his 
representatives — the poor. The " cursed" are those 
who have grudged the cost of mercy. 

And it is not only true that the funds of charity 
have been, in every age, immensely augmented by 
these strong representations, and have far exceeded 
the amount which spontaneous compassion would 
ever have contributed, but the very character of 
beneficence has been new-modelled by them. In 
the mind of every well-instructed Christian, a feel- 
ing compounded of a compunctious sense of inade- 
quate performance, and a solemn sense of the extent 
of the divine requirements, repugnates and subdues 
those self-gratulations, those giddy deliriums, and 
that vain ambition, which beset a course of active 
and successful beneficence. This remarkable ar- 
rangement of the Christian ethics, by which the 
largest possible contributions and the utmost possi- 
ble exertions are demanded in a tone of comprehen- 
sive authority, seems, besides its other uses, par- 
ticularly intended to quash the natural enthusiasm 
of active zeal. It is a strong antagonist principle in 
the mechanism of motives, ensuring an equilibrium, 
however great may be the intensity of action. We 
are thus taught that, as there can be no supereroga- 
tion in works of mercy, so neither can there be 
exultation. Nothing, it is manifest, but humility, 
becomes a servant who, at the best, barely acquits 
his duty. 



CHRISTIAN PHILANTHROPY. 165 

Let it, for example, have been given to a man 
to receive superior mental endowments, force of 
understanding, solidity of judgment, and richness of 
imagination, command of language, and graces of 
utterance ; a soul fraught with expansive kindness, 
and not more kind than courageous ; and let him, 
thus furnished by nature, have enjoyed the advan- 
tages of rank, and wealth, and secular influence ; 
and let it have been his lot, in the prime of life, to 
be stationed just on the fortunate centre of peculiar 
opportunities ; and then let it have happened that a 
fourth part of the human family, cruelly maltreated, 
stood as clients at his door, imploring help ; and let 
him in the very teeth of ferocious selfishness, have 
achieved deliverance for these suffering millions, and 
have given a deadly blow to the Moloch of blood 
and rapacity: and let him have been lifted to the 
heavens on the loud acclamations of all civilized 
nations, and blessed amid the sighs and joys of the 
ransomed poor, and his name diffused, like a charm, 
through every barbarous dialect of a continent. Let 
all this signal felicity have belonged to the lot of a 
Christian — a Christian well taught in the principles 
of his religion ; nevertheless, in the midst of his 
honest joy, he will find place rather for humiliation 
than for that vain excitement and exultation where- 
with a man of merely natural benevolence would 
not fail, in like circumstances, to be intoxicated. 
Without at all allowing the exaggerations of an 
affected humility, the triumphant philanthropist con- 
fesses that he is nothing, and, far from deeming him- 



166 MOTIVES OF 

self to have surpassed the requirements of the law 
of Christ, feels that he has done less than his duty. 

Christian philanthropy, thus boldly and solidly 
based on a sense of unlimited obligation, acquires a 
character essentially differing from that of sponta- 
neous kindness ; and while, as a source of relief to 
the wretched, it is rendered immensely more copious, 
is, at the same time, secured against the flatteries of 
self-love, and the excesses of enthusiasm, by the sol- 
emn sanctions of an unbounded responsibility. 

III. A nice balancing of motives is obtained from 
an opposite quarter in the Christian doctrine, of— 
The rewardableness of works of mercy*. This 
doctrine, than which no article of religion stands 
out more prominently on the surface of the New 
Testament, having been early abused, to the hurt of 
the fundamentals of piety, has, in the modern Church, 
been almost lost sight of, and fallen into disuse, or 
has even become liable to obloquy ; so that to insist 
upon it plainly has incurred a charge of Pelagianism, 
or of Romanism, or of some such error. This mis- 
understanding must be dispelled before Christian 
philanthropy can revive in full force. 

Amidst the awful reserve which envelops the 
announcement of a future life by our Lord and his 
ministers, three ideas, continually recurring, are to 
be gathered with sufficient clearness from their hasty 
allusions. The first is, that the future life will be 
the fruit of the present, as if by a natural sequence 
of cause and effect. " Whatsoever a man sows 
that shall he also reap." The second is, that the 



CHRISTIAN PHILANTHROPY. 167 

future harvest, though of like species and quality 
with the seed, will be immensely disproportioned to 
it in amount. " The things seen are temporal ; but 
the things unseen are eternal ;" and the sufferings 
of the present time are to be followed by u a far 
more exceeding and eternal weight of glory ;" and 
those who have been " faithful over a few things, 
will have rule over many." The third is, that 
though the disparity between the present reward and 
the future recompense will be vast and incalculable, 
yet will there obtain a most exact rule of corre- 
spondence between the one and the other, so that, 
from the hands of the " righteous Judge," every 
man will receive " severally, according as his work 
has been." m Nor shall even, (i a cup of cold water," 
given in Christian love, be omitted in that accurate 
account ; the giver shall " by no means lose his 
reward/' 

Such are the explicit and intelligible engagements 
of him whose commands are never far separated 
from his promises. It cannot then be deemed a 
becoming part of Christian temper to indulge a 
scrupulous hesitation in accepting and in acting 
upon the faith of these declarations. And as there 
is no real incompatibility or clashing of motives in 
the Christian system, any delicacy that may be felt, 
as if the hope of reward might interfere with a due 
sense of obligation to sovereign grace, must spring 
from an obscured and faulty perception of scriptural 
doctrines. The intelligent Christian, on the con- 
trary, when, in simplicity of heart, he calculates 
upon the promises of Heaven ; and when, with a 



168 MOTIVES OF 

distinct reckoning of the "great gain" of such an 
investment, he i: lays up for himself treasures that 
cannot fail ;" is, at the same time, taught and im- 
pelled by the strongest emotions of the heart, to 
connect his hope of recompense with his hope of 
pardon. And when the one class of ideas is thus 
linked to the other, he perceives that the economy 
which establishes a system of rewards for present 
services can be nothing else than an arbitrary ar- 
rangement of sovereign goodness, resolving itself 
altogether into the grace of the mediatorial scheme. 
The retribution, how accurately soever it may be 
measured out according to the work performed, 
must, in its whole amount, be still a pure gratuity ; 
not less so than is the gift of immortal life, conferred 
without probation upon the aborigines of heaven. 
The zealous and faithful servant who enters upon 
his reward after a long term of labor, and the 
infant of a day, who flits at once from the womb to 
the skies, alike receive the boon of endless bliss in 
virtue of their relationship to the second Adam, 
" the Lord from heaven." Nevertheless, this boon 
shall conspicuously appear, in the one case, to be 
the apportioned Wages of service, an exact recom- 
pense, measured, and weighed, and doled out in due 
discharge of an explicit engagement ; while in the 
other, it can be nothing but a sovereign bestowment. 
But it is manifest that this doctrine of future re- 
compense, when held in connection with the funda- 
mental principles of Christianity — justification by 
faith, tends directly to allay and disperse those ex 
citements which naturally spring up with the ze- 



CHRISTIAN PHILANTHROPY. 169 

of active benevolence. The series or order of sen- 
timents is this : — 

The Christian philanthropist, if well instructed, 
dares not affect indifference to the promised reward, 
or pretend to be more disinterested than were the 
Apostles, who labored, " knowing that in due time 
they should reap." He cannot think himself free 
to overlook a motive distinctly held out before him 
in the Scriptures : to do so were an impious arro- 
gance. And yet, if he does accept the promise of 
recompense, and takes it up as an inducement to 
diligence, he is compelled by a sense of the manifold 
imperfections of his services, to fall back constantly 
upon the divine mercies as they are assured to 
transgressors in Christ. These humbling sentiments 
utterly refuse to cohere with the complacencies of 
a selfish and vain-glorious philanthropy, and neces- 
sitate a subdued tone of feeling. Thus the very 
height and expansion of the Christian's hopes send 
the root of humility deep and wide ; the more his 
bosom heaves with the hope of " the exceeding great 
reward," the more is it quelled by the consciousness 
of demerit. The counterpoise of opposing senti- 
ments is so managed, that elevation cannot take 
place on the one side without an equal depression 
on the other ; and by the counteraction of antag- 
onist principles Ihe emotions of zeal may reach the 
highest, possible point, while full provision is made 
for correcting the vertigo of enthusiasm. 

If, in the early ages of the Church, the expecta- 
tion of future reward was abused, to the damage of 
fundamental principles, in modern times an ill-judged 

8 



170 MOTIVES OF 

zeal for the integrity of those principles has pro- 
duced an almost avowed jealousy towards many 
explicit declarations of Scripture : thus, the nerves 
of labor are either relaxed by the withdrawment of 
proper stimulants, or are absolutely severed by the 
bold hand of antinomian delusion. 

Moreover, a course of Christian beneficence is 
one peculiarly exposed to reverses, to obstructions, 
and often to active hostility ; and if the zeal of the 
philanthropist be in any considerable degree alloyed 
with the sinister motives of personal vanity, or be 
inflamed with enthusiasm, these reverses produce 
despondency ; or opposition and hostility kindle 
corrupt zeal into fanatical virulence. The injec- 
tion of a chemical test does not more surely bring 
out the element with which it has affinity, than does 
opposition, in an attempt to do good, make con- 
spicuous the presence of unsound motives, if any 
such have existed. Has it not happened that when 
benevolent enterprises have consisted in a direct 
attack upon systems of cruel or fraudulent oppres- 
sion, the quality of the zeal by which some were 
actuated in lending their clamors to the champions 
of humanity, has become manifest whenever the 
issue seemed doubtful, or the machinations of di- 
abolical knavery gained a momentary triumph ? 
Then, the partisans of truth and mercy, forgetful, 
alas ! of their principles, have broke out almost into 
the violence of political faction, and have hardly 
scrupled to employ the dark methods which faction 
loves. 

But there is a delicacy, a reserve, a sobriety, an 



CHRISTIAN PHILANTHROPY. 17l 

humbleness of heart, belonging to the hope of 
heavenly recompense, which powerfully repels all 
such malign emotions. Who can imagine the cir- 
cumstances and feelings of the great day of final 
reward, and think of hearing the approving voice of 
him who " searches the heart," and at the same time 
be told by conscience that the zeal which gives life 
to his labors in the cause of the oppressed ferments 
with the gall and acrimony of wordly animosity, 
that this zeal prompts him to indulge in exaggera- 
tions, if not to propagate calumnies ; and exults much 
more in the overthrow of the oppressor, than in the 
redemption of the captive ? If the greatness of the 
future reward proves that it must be altogether " of 
grace, not of debt," then, unquestionably, must it 
demand in the recipient a temper purified from the 
leaven of malice and hatred. Thus does the Chris- 
tian doctrine of future reward correct the evil pas- 
sions that are incident to a course of benevolence. 

IV. Christian beneficence is only the subordinate 
instrument of a higher and efficient agency. " Nei- 
ther is he that planteth anything, nor he that water- 
eth ; but God that giveth the increase." Such, on 
the scriptural plan, are the conditions of all labor, 
undertaken from motives of religious benevolence. 
But the besetting sin of natural benevolence is self- 
complacency and presumption. It is perhaps as 
hard to find sanctimoniousness apart from hypocrisy, 
or bashfulness without pride, as to meet with active 
and enterprising philanthropy not tainted by the 
spirit of overweening vanity. The kind-hearted 



172 MOTIVES OF 

schemer, fertile in devices for beguiling mankind 
into virtue, and rich in petty ingenuities, always 
well-intended, and seldom well-imagined, verily 
believes that his machineries of instruction or re- 
form require only to be put fairly in play, and they 
will bring heaven upon earth. 

But Christianity, if it does not sternly frown upon 
these novelties, does not encourage them ; and while 
it depicts the evils that destroy the happiness of man 
as of much deeper and more inveterate malignity 
than that they should be remedied by this or that 
specious method, devised yesterday, tried to-day, 
and abandoned to-morrow, most explicitly confines 
the hope of success to those who possess the temper 
of mind proper to a dependent and subordinate agent. 
All presumptuous confidence in the efficiency of 
second causes is utterly repugnant to the spirit that 
should actuate a Christian philanthropist ; and the 
more so when the good which he strives to achieve 
is of the highest kind. 

V. Lastly, Christian beneficence is the expression 
of grateful love. The importance attributed through- 
out the New Testament to active charity is not more 
remarkable than is this peculiarity which merges the 
natural and spontaneous sentiments of good-will and 
compassion towards our fellows, in an emotion of 
a deeper kind, and virtually denies merit and genu- 
ineness to every feeling, how amiable soever it may 
appear, if it does not thus fall into subordination to 
that devout affection which we owe to him who 
redeemed us by his sufferings and death. The 



CHRISTAIN PHILANTHROPY. 173 

reasons of this remarkable constitution of motives 
it is not difficult to perceive. For, in the first 
place, it is evident that the love of the Supreme 
Being can exist in the heart only as a dominant 
sentiment, drawing every other affection into its 
wake. Even the softest and purest tendernesses 
of our nature must yield precedence to the higher 
attachment of the soul ; for he who does not love 
Christ more than "father and mother, wife and 
children," loves him not. Much more, then, must 
the sentiment of general benevolence own the same 
subordination. Again ; as the promise of future 
recompense, and the doctrine of dependence upon 
divine agency, elevate the motives of benevolence 
from the level of earth to that of heaven, they would 
presently assume a character of dry and visionary 
abstraction, unless animated by an emotion of love, 
belonging to the same sphere. Zeal without love 
were a preposterous and dangerous passion : but 
Christian zeal must be warmed by no other love 
than that of him who, " for our sakes became poor, 
that we through his poverty might be made rich." 

It has already been said that religious enthusiasm 
takes its commencement from the point where the 
emotions of the heart are transmuted into mere 
pleasures of the imagination; and assuredly the 
excitements incident to a course of beneficence are 
very likely to furnish occasions to such a transmu- 
tation. But the capital motive of grateful affection 
to him who has redeemed us from sin and sorrow, 
prevents, so far as it is in active operation, this 
deadening of the heart, and consequent quickening 



174 MOTIVES OF 

of the imagination. The poor and the wretched are 
the Lord's representatives on eaith; and in doing 
them good we cherish and express feelings which 
otherwise must lie latent, or become vague, seeing 
that he to whom they relate is remote from our 
senses. 

This motive of affection to the Lord makes pro- 
vision, moreover, against the despondences that 
attend a want of success ; for although a servant of 
Christ may, to his life's end, labor in vain, although 
the objects of his disinterested kindness should "turn 
and rend him ;" yet, not the less, has he approved 
his loyalty and love ; approved it even more con- 
spicuously than those can have done whose labors 
are continually cheered and rewarded by prosperous 
results. Affection, in such cases, has sustained the 
trial, not merely of toil, but of fruitless toil, than 
which none can be more severe to a zealous and 
devoted heart. 

It appears, then, that Christian benevolence con- 
tains within itself a balancing of motives, such as to 
leave room for the utmost imaginable enhancement 
of zeal without hazard of extravagance. In truth, it 
is easy to perceive that the religion of the Bible has 
in reserve a spring of movement, a store of intrinsic 
vigor, ready to be developed in a manner greatly 
surpassing what has hitherto been seen. Such a 
day of development shall ere long arrive, the time 
of the triumph of divine principles shall come, and 
a style of true heroism be displayed, of which the 
seeds have been long sown ; of which some samples 



CHRISTIAN PHILANTHROPY. 175 

have already been furnished ; and which waits only 
the promised refreshment from above to appear, not 
in rare instances only, but as the common produce 
of Christianity. 

In the present state of the world and of the 
Church, when communications are so instantaneous, 
and when attention is so much alive to whatever 
concerns the welfare of mankind, if it might be 
imagined that a great and sudden extension of 
Christianity should take place in the regions of su- 
perstition and polytheism ; and that yet no corre- 
sponding improvement of piety, no purifying, no re- 
freshment, no enhancement of motives, should occur 
in the home of Christianity, there is reason to believe 
that the influx of excitement might generate a blaze 
of destructive enthusiasm. If every day had its tid- 
ings of wonder — the fall of popery in the neighbor- 
ing nations — the abandonment of the Mohammedan 
delusion by people after people in Asia — the rejec- 
tion of idols by China and India ; and if these sur- 
prising changes, instead of producing the cordial joy 
of gladdened faith, were gazed at merely with an 
unholy and prurient curiosity, and were thundered 
forth from platforms by heartless declaimers, and 
were grasped at by visionary interpreters of futurity ; 
then, from so much agitation, uncorrected by a pro- 
portionate increase of genuine piety, new prodigies 
of error would presently start up, new sects break 
away from the body, new hatreds be kindled : and 
nothing scarcely be left in the place of Christianity, 
but dogmas and contentions. Thus the cradle of 
religion in modern times would become its grave. 



176 MOTIVES, ETC. 

But a far happier anticipation is with reason in- 
dulged ; for it may well be believed that the same 
Benignant Influence which is to remove the cover- 
ing of gross ignorance from the nations, shall, at the 
same moment, scatter the dimness that still hovers 
over the Church in its most favored home ; and 
then, and under that influence, the fervors of Chris- 
tian zeal may reach the height even of a seraphic 
energy, and yet without enthusiasm. 



SECTION VIII. 

SKETCH OF THE ENTHUSIASM OF THE ANCIENT 
CHURCH. 

An intelligent Christian, fraught with scriptural 
principles in their simplicity and purity, but hitherto 
uninformed of Church history, who should peruse 
discursively the ecclesiastical writers of the age of 
Jerom, Ambrose, and Basil, would presently recoil 
with an emotion of disappointment, perplexity, and 
alarm. That within a period which does not ex- 
ceed the reach of oral tradition, the religion of the 
apostles should have so much changed its character, 
and so much have lost its beauty, he could not have 
supposed possible. He has heard indeed of the 
corruptions of popery, and of the enormous abuses 
prevalent in " the dark ages ;" and he has been told 
too, by those who had a special argument to prop, 
that the era of the secular prosperity of the church 
was that also of the incipient corruption of religion. 
But he finds in fact that there is scarcely an error 
of doctrine, or an absurdity of practice, ordinarily 
attributed to the popes and councils of later times, 
and commonly included in the indictment against 
Rome, which may not, in its elements, or even in a 
8* 



178 ENTHUSIASM 

developed form, be traced to the writings of those 
whose ancestors, at the third or fourth remove only, 
were the hearers of Paul and John. 

But after the first shock of such an unprepared 
perusal of the fathers has passed, and when calm 
reflection has returned, and especially when, by 
taking up these early writers from the commence- 
ment, the progression of decay and perversion has 
been gradually and distinctly contemplated, then, 
though the disappointment will in great part remain, 
the appalling surmises at first engendered in the 
modern reader's mind, will be dispelled, and he 
will even be able to pursue his course of reading 
with pleasure, and to derive from it much solid 
instruction. Considerations such as the following 
will naturally present themselves to him in miti- 
gation of his first painful impressions. 

While contemplating in their infant state those 
notions and practices (of the third century, for ex- 
ample) which afterwards swelled into enormous 
evils, it is difficult not to view them as if they were 
loaded with the blame of their after issues ; and 
then it is hard not to attribute to their originators 
and promoters the accumulated criminality that 
should be shared in small portions by the men of 
many following generations. But the individuals 
thus unfairly dealt by, far from forecasting the con- 
sequences of the sentiments and usages they favored, 
far from viewing them, as we do, darkened by the 
cloud of mischiefs that was heaped upon them in 
after times, saw the same objects bright and fair in 
the recommendatory gleam of a pure and a venerated 



OF THE ANCIENT CHURCH. 179 

age. The very abuses which make the twelfth cen- 
tury abhorrent on the page of history, were, in the 
fourth, fragrant with the practice and suffrage of 
a blessed company of primitive confessors. The re- 
membered saints, who had given their bodies to the 
flames, had also lent their voice and example to those 
unwise excesses which at length drove true religion 
from the earth. Untaught by experience, the ancient 
church surmised not of the occult tendencies of the 
course it pursued, nor should be loaded with conse- 
quences which human sagacity could not well have 
foreseen. 

Each of the great corruptions of later ages took 
its rise, in the first, second, or third century, in a 
manner which it would be harsh to say was deserv- 
ing of strong reprehension. Thus the secular dom- 
ination exercised by the bishops, and at length su- 
premely by the bishops of Rome, may be traced very 
distinctly to the proper respect paid by the people, 
even in the apostolic age, to the disinterested wisdom 
of their bishops in deciding their worldly differences. 
The worship of images, the invocation of saints, 
and the superstition of relics, were but expansions 
of the natural feeling of veneration and affection 
cherished towards the memory of those who had 
suffered and died for the truth. And thus, in like 
manner, the errors and abuses of monkery all sprang, 
b}' imperceptible augmentations, from sentiments 
perfectly natural to the sincere and devout Christian 
in times of persecution, disorder, and general cor- 
ruption of morals. 



180 ENTHUSIASM 

Again : human nature, which is far more uni- 
form than may be imagined, when suddenly it is 
beheld under some new aspect of time and country, 
is also susceptible of much greater diversities of 
habit and feeling than those are willing to believe 
who have seen it on no side but one. This double 
lesson, taught by history and travel, should be well 
learned by every one who undertakes to estimate 
the merits of men that have lived in remote times, 
and under other skies. 

A caution against the influence of narrow preju- 
dice is obviously more needful in relation to the 
persons and practices of ancient Christianity, than 
when common history is the subject of inquiry ; for 
in whatever relates to religion, every one carries 
with him, not merely the ordinary prepossessions of 
time and country, but an unbending standard of 
conduct and temper, which he is forward to com- 
pare, in his particular manner, with whatever offends 
his notions of right. But though the rule of Script- 
ure morals is unchangeable, and must be applied 
with uncompromising impartiality to human nature 
under every variety of circumstance, yet is it im- 
practible, at the distance of upwards of a thousand 
years, so fully to calculate those circumstances, and 
so to perceive the motives of conduct, as is neces- 
sary for estimating fairly the innocence or the crim- 
inality of particular actions or habits of life. The 
question of abstract fitness, and that of personal 
blameworthiness, should ever be kept apart : at least 
they should be kept apart when it is asked — and we 
are olten tempted to ask it in the perusal of church 



OF THE ANCIENT CHURCH. 181 

history — May such men be deemed Christians, who 
acted and wrote thus and thus ? Before a doubt of 
this kind could be solved satisfactorily, we must 
know — what can never be known till the day of 
universal discovery — how much of imperfection and 
obliquity may consist with the genuineness of real 
piety ; and again, how much of real obliquity there 
might be, under the actual circumstances of the case, 
in the conduct in question. Who can doubt that if 
the memorials of the present times, copious, and yet 
inadequate as they must be, shall remain to a distant 
age, they will offer similar perplexities to the future 
reader, who, amidst his frequent admiration or ap- 
proval, will be compelled to exclaim — But how 
may we think these men to have been Christians ? 
Christianity is in gradual process of reforming the 
principles and practices of mankind, and when the 
sanative operation shall have advanced some several 
stages beyond its present point, the notions and 
usages of our day, compared with the commands of 
Christ, as then understood, will, no doubt, seem in- 
credibly defective. 

Perhaps it may be said, that in all matters of sen- 
timent, depending on physical temperament, and 
modes of life, the people of the British islands are 
less qualified to appreciate the merits of the nations 
of antiquity than almost any other people of Chris- 
tendom ; and perhaps, also, by national arrogance 
^nd pertinacity of taste, w 7 e are less ready to bend 
mdulgently to usages unlike our own than any other 
people. Stiff in the resoluteness of an exaggerated 
notion of the right of private judgment, we bring 



182 ENTHUSIASM 

all things unsparingly to the one standard of belief 
and practice ; or rather to our particular pattern of 
that standard ; and do not, until our better nature 
prevails, own brotherhood with Christians of an- 
other complexion and costume. A somewhat aus- 
tere good sense, belonging, first, to the haughtiness 
and energy of the English character, then to the 
liberality of our political institutions, and lastly, but 
not least, to the all-pervading spirit and habits of 
trade, renders the style of the early Christian writers 
much more distasteful to us than it has proved to 
Christians of other countries. Moreover, recent 
enhancements of the national character, resulting 
from the diffusion of the physical sciences, and from 
the more extended prevalence of commercial feel- 
ings, have placed those writers at a point much 
further removed from our predilections than that at 
which they stood a century ago. 

But again : in abatement of the chagrin which a 
well-instructed Christian must feel in first opening 
the remains of ecclesiastical literature, it must be 
remembered, that these works offer a very defective 
image of the state of religion at the era of their 
production ; that is to say, of religion in its recesses, 
which are truly the homes of Christianity. Those 
who write are by no means always those among 
the ministers of religion whom it would be judi- 
cious to select as the best samples of the spirit of 
their times. Moreover, it is the taste of a following 
age that has determined which among the writers 
of the preceding period should be transmitted to 



OF THE ANCIENT CHURCH. 183 

posterity ; and in many instances, it is manifest, that 
a depraved preference has given literary canoniza- 
tion to authors whose ambition was much rather to 
shine as masters of a florid eloquence, than to feed 
the flock of Christ. It was therefore an egregious 
error to suppose that the spiritual character of the 
Church lies broadly on the surface of its extant 
literature : on the contrary, charity may easily find 
large room for pleasing conjectures relative to ob- 
scure piety, of which no traces are to be found on 
the pages of saints and bishops. The record of the 
spiritual church is " on high," — not in the tomes that 
make our libraries proud. 

These, and other considerations, which will pre- 
sent themselves to a candid and intelligent mind, 
cannot but remove much of the embarrassment and 
disrelish that are likely to attend a first converse 
with ancient divinity. And the pious reader will 
proceed with heartfelt satisfaction to collect evidence 
of the fact, which some modern sophists have so 
much labored to obscure, that the rudiments, at 
least, of revealed religion, as now understood by the 
mass of Christians, were then firmly held by the 
body of the Church. And he will rejoice also to 
meet with not less satisfactory proofs of the energy 
and intenseness of practical Christianity among a 
large number of those who made profession of the 
name. 

Nevertheless, after every fair allowance has been 
made, and every indulgence given to diversity of 
circumstance, and after the errors and disgraces of 
our own times have been placed in counterpoise to 



184 ENTHUSIASM 

those of the ancient church, there will remain glar- 
ing indications of a deep-seated corruption of re- 
ligious sentiment, leaving hardly a single feeling 
proper to the Christian life in its purity and sim- 
plicity. It is not heresy, it is not the denial of the 
principal scriptural doctrines, that is to be charged 
on the ancient church ; the body of divinity held its 
integrity. Nor is it the want of heroic virtue that 
we lament. But a transmutation of the objects of 
the devout affections into objects of imaginative 
delectation had taken place, had rendered the piety 
of a numerous class purely fictitious, had tinged, 
more or less, with idealism, the religious sentiments 
of all but a few, and had opened the way by which 
entered at length, the dense and fatal delusions of a 
superstition so gross as hardly to retain a redeeming 
quality. 

Not a few of the Christians of the third century, 
and multitudes in the fourth and fifth, especially 
among the recluses, having lost the forcible and 
genuine feeling of guilt and danger, proper to those 
who confess themselves transgressors of the divine 
law, and in consequence become blind to the real 
purport of the Gospel, fixed their gaze upon the 
ideal splendors of Christianity, were smitten with 
the phase it presents, of beauty, of sublimity, of in- 
finitude, of intellectual elevation, were charmed with 
its supposed doctrine of abstraction from mundane 
agitations ; and found within the sphere of its reve- 
lations unfathomable_depths, where vague meditation 
might plunge and plunge with endless descents. 
Fascinated, deluded, and still blinded more by the 



OF THE ANCIENT CHURCH. 185 

deepening shades of error, they forgot almost en- 
tirely the emotions of a true repentance, and of a 
cordial faith, and of a cheerful obedience ; and in 
the rugged path of gratuitous afflictions, and un- 
natural mortifications, pursued a spectral resem- 
blance of piety, unsubstantial and cold as the mists 
of night. 

While hundreds were fatally infatuated by this 
enthusiastic religion, the piety of thousands was 
more or less impaired by their mere admiration of 
it ; and very few altogether escaped the sickening 
infection which its presence spread through the 
church. A volume might soon be filled with proofs 
of this assertion, drawn exclusively from the writings 
of those of the fathers who retained most of the 
vigor of native good sense, and who held nearest 
to the purity of Christian doctrine. The works of 
Chrysostom would afford abundant illustration of 
this sort. Let his Epistle to the Monks be singled 
out, which contains many admirable instructions and 
exhortations on the subject of prayer ; and which, 
with much propriety, recommends the practice of 
ejaculatory supplication. Nevertheless, there is 
scarcely a passage quoted from the Scriptures in this 
piece that is not distorted from its obvious and 
simple meaning, in such a manner as would best 
comport with the practices and notions of the ascetic 
life. If the meaning put by Chrysostom upon the 
texts he adduces be the true one, then must a large 
part of the inspired writings be deemed altogether 
useless to those who have not abjured the duties of 
common life. Or if such persons may still be per* 



186 ENTHUSIASM OF THE ANCIENT CHURCH. 

mitted to enjoy their part in the Scriptures, not less 
than the monks, then must we suppose a double 
sense throughout the Bible. In fact the notion of a 
double sense flowed inevitably from the monkish 
institution, and wrought immense mischief in the 
church. 

Modern writers of a certain class have expatiated 
with disproportionate amplification upon the open 
and flagrant corruptions which, as it is alleged, 
followed as a natural consequence from the secular 
aggrandizement of the clergy, when a voice from 
the heavens of political power said to the church, 
"Come up hither." No doubt an enhancement and 
expansion of pride, ambition, luxuriousness, and 
every mundane passion, took place at Rome, at Con- 
stantinople, at Alexandria, at Antioch, and else- 
where, when emperors, instead of oppressing, or 
barely tolerating the doctrine of Christ, bowed obse- 
quiously to his ministers. But the very same evils, 
far from being called into existence by the breath 
of imperial favor, had reached a bold height even 
while the martyrs were still bleeding. And more- 
over, how offensive or injurious soever these scan- 
dals might be, either before or after the epoch of the 
political triumph of the cross, they did but scathe 
the exterior of Christianity. In every age the vices, 
always duly blazoned, of secular churchmen, have 
stained its surface. But when there has been 
warmth and purity within, the mischief occasioned 
by such evils has scarcely been more than that of 
giving point to the railleries of men who would still 



THE ANCTENT- MONACHISM. 18? 

have scoffed, though not a bishop had been arrogant, 
nor a presbyter licentious. 

Christianity had lost its simplicity and glory in 
the hands of its most devoted friends long before the 
alliance between the church and the world had 
taken place. The copious history of this internal 
perversion would afford a worthy subject of diligent 
inquiry ; and though materials for a complete expli- 
cation of the process of corruption are not in 
existence, enough remains to invite and reward the 
necessary labor. 

The enthusiasm of the ancient church presents 
itself under several distinct forms, among which 
the following may be mentioned as the most con- 
spicuous : — the enthusiasm of voluntary martyr- 
dom ; that of miraculous pretension ; that of pro- 
phetical interpretation, or millenarianism ; that of 
the mystical exposition of Scripture; and that of 
monachism. Of these, the last, whether or not it 
was truly the parent of the other kinds, includes them 
all as parts of itself; for whatever perversions of 
Christianity were chargeable upon the sentiments 
and practices of the general church, the same be- 
longed by eminence to the recluses. A review of 
the principles and the ingredients of this system will 
better accord with the limits and design of this es- 
say, than an extended examination of facts under 
the several heads just named. 

A strict equity has by no means always been 
observed by protestant writers in their criminations 



188 ORIGIN OF THE 

of the Romish church. With the view of aggra- 
vating the just and necessary indignation of man- 
kind against the mother of corruption, it has been 
usual to lay open the concealments of the monastery ; 
-and with materials before him so various and so 
copious, even the dullest writer might cheaply be 
entertaining, eloquent, and vigorous. Meantime it 
is not duly considered, or not fairly stated, that the 
reprobation passes back, in full force, to an age much 
more remote than that of the supremacy of Rome. 
The bishops of Rome did but avail themselves of the 
aid of a system which had reached a full maturity 
without their fostering care ; a system which had 
been sanctioned and cherished, almost without an 
exception, by every father of the church, eastern 
and western ; which had come down in its elements 
even from the primitive age, and which had won for 
itself a suffrage so general, if not universal, that he 
must have possessed an extraordinary measure of 
wisdom, courage, and influence, who should have 
ventured beyond a cautious and moderated censure 
of its more obvious abuses. 

Every essential principle, almost every adjunct, 
and almost every vice of the monkery of the tenth 
or twelfth century, may be detected in that of the 
fourth : or if an earlier period were named, proof 
would not be wanting to make the allegation de- 
fensible. But if it be affirmed, or if it could be 
proved, that the actual amount of hypocrisy and 
corruption usually sheltered beneath the roof of the 
monastery, was greater in the later than in the 
earlier age, it should as a counterpoise be stated, 



ANCIENT M-ONACHISM. 189 

that in the later period the religious houses con- 
tained almost all the piety and learning that any- 
where existed : while in the former there was cer- 
tainly as much piety without as within these seclu- 
sions ; and much more of learning. The monkery 
of the middle ages, moreover, stands partially ex- 
cused by the dense ignorance of the times ; while 
that of the ancient Church is condemned by the sur- 
rounding light, both of human and divine knowledge. 
The very establishments which redeem the age of 
Roger Bacon from oblivion and contempt, do but 
blot the times of Gregory Nazianzen. 

Eusebius, followed by several later writers, as- 
serts, although in opposition to the most explicit ev- 
idence, and manifestly for the purpose of giving 
sanction to a system so much admired in his time, 
that the Christian sodalities were directly derived 
from those of the Essenes and Therapeutics of Ju- 
dea and Egypt, whom he affirms to have been 
Christian recluses of the first century, indebted for 
their rules and establishment to St. Mark. The tes- 
timony of the Jew Philo gives conclusive contra- 
diction to this sinister averment ; not to mention 
that of the elder Pliny, and of Josephus ; for the 
minute description given by that writer of the opin- 
ions and observances of the sect, besides that it is 
incompatible with the supposition that the people 
spoken of were Christians, was actually composed in 
the lifetime of Paul and Peter, and the recluses are 
then mentioned as having long existed under the same 
regulations. Nevertheless, the coincidence between 
the sentiments and practices of the Jewish and of 



190 MOT. VES OF THE 

the Christian monks, is too complete to be attributed 
either to accident, or merely to the influence of 
general principles, operating alike in both instances ; 
and the more limited assertion of Photius may safely 
be adopted, who affirms that " the sect of Jews that 
followed a philosophic life, whether contemplative or 
active — the one called Essenes, the other Therapeu- 
tics — not only founded monasteries and private sanc- 
tuaries, but laid down the rules which have been 
adopted by those who, in our own times, lead a soli- 
tary life." 

A reference to the previous existence of monas- 
ticism among the Jews, in a very specious, and, in 
some respects, commendable mode, is indispensable 
to the forming of an equitable judgment of the 
conduct of those Christians in Palestine and Egypt, 
who first abandoned the duties of common life for 
the indulgence of their religious tastes. They did 
but adopt a system already sanctioned by long 
usage, and which, though existing in the time of 
Christ and the apostles, had not drawn upon itself 
from him or them any explicit condemnation ; and 
which might even plead a semblance of support from 
some of their injunctions, literally understood, though 
plainly condemned by the spirit of Christianity. 

Nor is this the sole circumstance that should, in 
mere justice, be considered in connection with the 
rise of Christian monachism ; for before the mere 
facts can be understood, and certainly before the due 
measure of blame can be assigned to the parties con- 
cerned, it is indispensable that we divest ourselves 
of the prejudices, physical, moral, and intellectual, 



ANCIENT MONACHISM. 191 

which belong to our austere climate, high-toned 
irritability, edacious appetites, and pampered consti- 
tutions ; to our rigid style of thinking, and to our 
commercial habits of feeling. The Christian of 
England in the nineteenth century, and the Christian 
of Syria in the second, stand almost at the extremest 
points of opposition in all the non-essentials of 
human nature ; and the former must possess great 
pliability of imagination, and much of the philosophic 
temper, as well as the spirit of Christian charity, 
fairly and fully to appreciate the motives and con- 
duct of the latter. 

That quiescent under-action of the mind to which 
we apply the term meditation, is a habit of thought 
that has been engrafted upon the European intellect 
in consequence of the reception of Christianity. It 
is a product almost as proper to Asia as are the 
aromatics of Arabia, or the spices of India. The 
human mind does not everywhere expand in this 
manner, nor spontaneously show these hues of 
heaven, nor emit this fragrance, except under the 
fervent suns and deep azure skies of tropical regions. 
Persia and India were the native soils of the con- 
templative philosophy ; as Greece was the source of 
the ratiocinative. The immense difference between 
the Asiatic and the European turn of mind — if the 
familiar phrase may be used — becomes conspicuous if 
some pages of either the logic or ethics of Aristotle 
are compared with what remains of the sentiments 
of the Gnostics. The influence of Christianity upon 
the moderns has been to temper the severity of the 



192 MOTIVES OF THE 

ratiocinative taste, with a taste for contemplation — 
contemplation by so much the better than that of the 
oriental sages, as it takes its range in the heart, not 
in the imagination. If the Hebrew and Christian 
Scriptures had been confined to the east, as in fact 
they have been almost confined to the west, the 
modern nations of Europe would perhaps have known 
as little of the compass of the meditative faculty, and 
of its delights, as did the Romans in the age of Sylla. 
The Greeks, being near to Asia geographically, and 
near by similarity of climate, and near by the 
repeated importations of eastern philosophy, imbibed 
something of the spirit of tranquil abstraction : yet 
was it foreign to the genius of that restless and 
reasoning people. Pythagoras probably, and cer- 
tainly Plato, whose mind was almost as much Asiatic 
as Grecian, and whose writings are anomalies in 
Grecian literature, effected a partial amalgamation 
of the oriental with the western style of thought. 
Yet the foreign mixture would probably have dis- 
appeared if Christianity had not afterwards diffused 
eastern sentiments through the west. The combina- 
tion was again cemented by the writings of those 
fathers who, after having studied Plato, and taught 
the rhetoric and philosophy of Greece, devoted their 
talents to the service of the Gospel. 

But though the nations of the west have acquired 
a taste for this species of thought, it is the distinc- 
tion of the Asiatic to mediate ; as to reason and to 
act, is the glory of the European. To withdraw the 
soul from the senses, to divorce the exterior from 
the inner man, to detain the spirit within its own 



ANCIENT MONACHISM. 193 

circle, and to accustom it there to find its bliss ; to 
penetrate the depths and concealments of the heart, 
to repose during lengthened periods upon a single 
idea, without a wish for progression or change ; or 
to break away from the imperfections of the visible 
world, to climb the infinite, to hold converse with 
supernal beauty and excellence ; these are the pre- 
rogatives and pleasures of the intellectualist of Asia : 
and this is a happiness which he enjoys in a per- 
fection altogether unknown to the busy, nervous, 
and frigid people of the north. If by favor of a 
peculiar temperament the oriental frees himself from 
the solicitations of voluptuous indulgence ; if the 
mental tastes are vivid enough to counteract the 
appetites ; then he finds a life of inert abstraction, 
of abstemiousness, and of solitude, not merely easy, 
but delicious. 

The lassitude which belongs to his constitution 
and climate more than suffices to reconcile the con- 
templatist to the want of those enjoyments which 
are to be obtained only by toil. A genial tempera- 
ture, and a languid stomach, reduce the necessary 
charges of maintenance to an amount that must seem 
incredibly small to the well-housed, well-clothed, and 
high-fed people of northern Europe. The slenderest 
revenues are, therefore, enough to free him from all 
cares of the present life. He has only to renounce 
married life, its claims and its burdens, and then the 
skeleton machinery of his individual existence may 
be impelled in its daily round of sluggish movement, 
by air, and water, and a lettuce. 

The Asiatic character is in no inconsiderable de- 
9 



194 MOTIVES OF THE 

gree affected by the habits which result from the 
insufferable fervor of the sun at noon, and which 
compels a suspension of active employments during 
the broad light of day. The period of venial indo- 
lence easily extends itself through all the hours of 
sultry heat, if necessity does not exact labor. And 
then the quiescence in which the day has been passed 
lends an elasticity of mind to the hours of night, 
when the effulgent magnificence of the heavens 
kindles the imagination, and enhances meditation 
to ecstasy. How little beneath the lowering, and 
chilly, and misty skies of Britain, can we appreciate 
the power of these natural excitements of mental 
abstraction ! 

In an enumeration of the natural causes of the 
anchoretic life, the influence of scenery should by 
no means be overlooked. As the gay and multiform 
beauties of a broken surface, teeming with vegetation 
(when seconded by favoring circumstances) gene- 
rate the soul of poetry; so (with similar aids) the 
habit of musing in pensive vacuity of thought is 
cherished by the aspect of boundless wastes, and 
arid plains, or of enormous piles of naked mountain : 
and to the spirit that has turned with sickening or 
melancholy aversion from the haunts of man, such 
scenes are not less grateful or less fascinating than 
are the most delicious landscapes to the frolic eye of 
joyous youth. The wilderness of the Jordan, the 
stony tracts of Arabia, the precincts of Sinai, and the 
dead solitudes of sand traversed, but not enlivened 
by the Nile, offered themselves, therefore, as the 
natural birth-places of monachism ; and skirting as 



ANCIENT MONACIIISM. 195 

they did the focus of religion, long continued (indeed 
they have never wholly ceased) to invite numerous 
desertions from the ranks of common life. 

A general and extreme corruption of manners, 
the waatonness, and folly, and enormity of licentious 
opulence, and the foul depravity which never fails 
to characterise the misery that follows the steps of 
luxury, operate powerfully in the way of reaction to 
exacerbate the motives and to swell the excesses of 
the ascetic life, when once that mode of religion 
has been called into being. If the " powers of the 
world to come" are vividly felt by those who 
renounce sensual pleasure, the vigor of their self-de- 
nial, and the firmness of their resolution in adhering 
to their rule, will commonly bear proportion to the 
depth of the surrounding profligacy. Nothing could 
more effectually starve this species of enthusiasm in 
any country in which it appeared to be growing, 
than to elevate public morals. The exaggerated 
virtue of the monastery can hardly subsist in the 
near neighborhood of the genuine virtue of domestic 
life ; nor will religious celibacy be in high esteem 
among a people who regard adultery, not less than 
murder and theft, as a crime, and with whom forni- 
cation is the cloaked vice only of a few. But in 
Syria and the neighboring countries, at the time 
when the monastic life took its rise, the most shame- 
less dissoluteness of manners prevailed, and pre* 
vailed to a degree that has rarely been exceeded ; 
and there is reason to believe that the early estab- 
lishments of the Essenes were, in a great measure, 
peopled by those who, having imbibed the love of 



196 MOTIVES OF THE 

virtue from Moses and the prophets, fled, almost by 
necessity, from a world in which the practice of 
temperance and purity had become scarcely possible. 
In after times, the corruption of the great cities, in 
a similar manner, contributed to fill the monastic 
houses. The evidence of Josephus (often cited) 
though there may sometimes be traced in it a little 
oratorical exaggeration, is sufficient to prove the 
existence of a more than ordinary profligacy and 
ferocity among the Jews of his time. This people, 
destitute of the restraining and refining influence of 
philosophy and of elegant literature, which amelio- 
rated the manners of the surrounding nations, had 
been deprived, almost entirely, of all salutary re- 
straints from the divine law by the corrupt evasions 
of rabbinical exposition. At the same time, the 
keen disappointment of the national hope of uni- 
versal dominion under the Messiah, exasperated 
their native pride to madness. 

A large indulgence, to say no more, is therefore 
due to those ardent, but feeble-minded persons, who, 
untaught by an experiment of the danger they 
incurred, fell into the specious error of supposing 
that a just solicitude for the preservation of personal 
virtue might excuse their withdrawment from the 
duties of common life ; and the more so as they 
were willing to purchase a discharge from its claims 
by resigning their share of its lawful delights. The 
Christian recluses fled from scenes in which, as 
they believed, purity could not breathe, to solitudes 
where (though no doubt they found themselves mis- 
taken) they supposed it would flourish spontaneously 



ANCIENT MONACHISM. 197 

And in truth, though it must be much more difficult 
to live virtuously under the provoking restraints of 
monastic vows, than amid the allowed enjoyments 
of domestic life, refined by Christianity, there may 
be room to question whether the balance might not 
really be in favor of the monastery, when the only 
alternative was an abode with the most extreme 
profligacy. 

So natural to young and ardent minds, under the 
first fervors of religious feeling, is the wish to run 
far from the sight and hearing of seductive pleasure, 
and so plausibly may such a design recommend itself 
to the simple and sincere, that, even in our own 
times, if by any means the general opinion of the 
Christian church could be brought round to favor, 
or to allow, the practice of monastic seclusion, and 
if, instead of being on all sides reprobated and ridi- 
culed, it were permitted, encouraged, and admired, 
the conjecture may be hazarded, that an instan- 
taneous rush from all our religious communities 
would take place, and a host of the ardent, the 
imaginative, the melancholic ; not to mention the 
disappointed, the splenetic, and the fanatical, would 
abandon the domestic circle, and the scenes of busi- 
ness, to people sanctuaries of celibacy and prayer in 
every sequestered valley of our island.* 

Besides the ordinary miseries of frequent war, 
and of a foreign domination, which afflicted, more or 
less, the other provinces of the Roman empire, the 

* This conjecture, hazarded in 1829, would seem now to be not 
unlikely to be, to some extent, realized. 



198 MOTIVES OF THE 

existence, among the Jews, of a species of fanaticism 
perfectly unparalleled, allowed the Syrian Palestine 
to taste very imperfectly, the benefit of temperate 
and vigorous rule. The intractable and malign 
infatuation of that people had so baffled the wisdom 
of the Roman government, and had so disturbed its 
wonted equanimity, as to compel it to treat the 
unhappy Judea with unmeasured severity. Or if 
respite were enjoyed from military inflictions, the 
brutal violences of their own princes, or the atro- 
cities perpetrated by demagogues, kept constantly 
alive the brand of public and private discord. 
During such times of insecurity and wretchedness, 
it is usual for the passive portion of the community 
to sink into a state, either of recklesss sensuality, or 
of pining despondency. But if, in this class, there 
are those who have received the consoling hope of 
a bright and peaceful immortality, it is only natural 
that, when hunted from every earthly comfort by 
violence and extortion, they should look wistfully at 
the grave, and long to rest where " the wicked cease 
from troubling." In this state of mind it cannot be 
deemed strange that, upon the first smile of oppor- 
tunity, they should hasten away from scenes of blood 
and wrong, and anticipate the wished-for release 
from life, by hiding themselves in caverns and in 
deserts. 

The most frightful solitude might well appear a 
paradise, and the most extreme privation be thought 
luxurious, to those who, in their retreat, felt at 
length safe from an encounter with man, who, when 
savage, is by far the most terrible of all savage 



ANCIENT MONACHISM. 199 

animals. Such were the causes which had driven 
multitudes of the well-disposed among the Jews 
into the wilderness. The severities of persecution 
afterwards produced the same effect on the Chris- 
tians ; and first on those of Syria and Egypt. 
This effect is well known to have resulted from 
the Decian persecution, and probably also from those 
that preceded it. Little blame can be attributed to 
Christians who, in such times fled from cities, and took 
refuge in solitudes ; unless, indeed, by so doing they 
abandoned those whom they ought to have defended. 

So long as he could wander unmolested over the 
pathless mountain track, or exist in the arid desert, 
the timid follower of Christ not only avoided torture 
or violent death, but escaped what he dreaded more 
— the hazard of apostacy under extreme trial. Hav- 
ing once effected his retreat, and borne for a time 
the loss of friends and comforts, he soon acquired 
physical habits and intellectual tastes which rendered 
a life in the wilderness not only tolerable but agree- 
able. To the fearful and inert,. safety and rest are 
the prime ingredients of happiness, and, if absolute, 
they go far towards constituting a heaven upon earth. 

In the utter solitude of the desert, or in the miti- 
gated seclusion of the monastery, a large proportion 
probably, of the recluses, soon drooped into the 
inanity of trivial pietism : a few, perhaps, after the 
first excitement failed, bit their chain, from day to 
day, to the end of life : or wrung a wretched solace 
from concealed vices. But those who, by vigor of 
mind, supported better the preying of the soul upon 
itself, could do no otherwise than exchange the 



200 MOTIVES OF THE ANCIENT MONACHISM. 

simple and affectionate piety with which, perhaps 
they entered the wilderness, for some form of 
visionary religion.* To maintain, unbent, the rec- 
titude of sound reason, and unsullied, the propriety 
of sound feelings, in solitude, is an achievement, 
which, it may confidently be affirmed, surpasses the 
powers of human nature. Good sense, never the 
product of a single mind, is the fruit of intercourse 
and collision. 

When the several circumstances above mentioned 
are duly considered, they will remove from candid 
minds almost every sensation of asperity or of con- 
temptuous reprobation, towards those who, in their 
day of defective knowledge, became the victims, or 
even the zealous supporters of the prevalent enthu- 
siasm. We have done, then, with the parties in these 
scenes of delusion and folly ; or at least with those 
of them who were sincere in their error. But when 
we turn to the system itself, and gain that license 
which charity herself may grant, while an abstrac- 
tion only is under contemplation, we must remember 
that this monkery, so innocent in its commencement, 
and so plausible in its progress, was the chief means 
of destroying the spiritual reality of Christianity, and 
ought to be deemed the principle cause of that gross 
darkness which hung over the church during more 
than a thousand years. 

* The errors and extravagances generated by the monastic life 
did not ordinarily extend to the fundamental principles of Christian- 
ity. The monks were, for the most part, zealously attached to the 
doctrine of the Nicene creed ; and the church owes to many of them 
its thanks for the constancy with which they suffered in its defence. 



SECTION IX. 

THE SAME SUBJECT. INGREDIENTS OF THE ANCIENT 

MONACHISM. 

Among the principal elements of the ancient Mon- 
achism, it is natural to name, first — 

Its contempt of the divine constitution of human 
nature, and the outrage it offered to the most salu- 
tary instincts. 

It may be difficult to determine which is the 
greater folly and impiety, that of the Atheist, who 
can contemplate the admirable mechanism of the 
body, and not see there the proofs of divine wisdom 
and benevolence ; or that of the Enthusiast, who, 
seeing and acknowledging the hand of God in the 
mechanism of the human frame, yet dares to insti- 
tute, and to recommend, modes of life which do 
violence to the manifest intentions of the Creator, as 
therein displayed ; and, moreover, is not afraid to 
assert a warrant from Heaven for such outrages ; as 
if the Creator and Governor of the world were not 
one and the same Being ; — one in counsel and pur- 
pose : or as if the Author of Christianity were at 
variance with the Author of nature ! Yet this pre- 
posterous error, this virtual Manichaeism, has seemed 
9 # 



202 INGREDIENTS OF THE 

to belong naturally to every attempt to stretch and 
exaggerate the precepts of the Gospel beyond their 
obvious sense ; and indeed has seldom failed to 
show itself in seasons of unusual religious ex- 
citement. 

Christianity is a religion neither for angels nor for 
ghosts ; but for man, as God made him. Neverthe- 
less, in revealing an endless existence, and in estab- 
lishing the paramount claims of the future world, it 
has placed every interest of the present transient 
life under a comparison of immense disparity ; so 
that it is true — true to a demonstration, that a man 
ought to " hate his own life" if the love of it puts 
his welfare for immortality in jeopardy. Unques- 
tionably, if by such means the well-being of the im- 
perishable spirit could be secured and promoted, it 
would highly become a wise man to pass the residue 
of life, though it should hold out half a century, 
upon the summit of a column, exposed, like a bronze, 
to the alternations of day and night, of summer and 
winter ; or to stand speechless and fixed, with the 
arms extended, until the joints should stiffen, and 
the tongue forget its office ; or to inhabit a tomb, or 
to hang suspended in the air by a hook in the side : 
these, and if there be any other practices still more 
horrifying to humanity, were doubtless wise, if, in 
the use of them, the soul might be advantaged ; 
for the soul is of infinitely greater value than the 
body. 

And much more might it be deemed lawful and 
commendable to refrain from matrimony, to with- 
draw from human society, to be clad in sackcloth, 



ANCIENT MONACHISM. 203 

to inhabit a cavern, if such comparatively moderate 
abstinences and mortifications were found to pro- 
mote virtue, and so to ensure an enhancement of 
the bliss that never ends. Conduct of this sort, 
however painful it may be, is perfectly in harmony 
with the principle universally admitted to be rea- 
sonable, and in fact very commonly reduced to 
practice, namely, to endure a smaller immediate loss 
or inconvenience, for the sake of securing greater 
future good. 

The dictates of self-interest every day prompt 
sacrifices of this kind ; and the maxims of natural 
virtue go much further, and often require a man to 
make the greatest deposit possible, even when the 
future advantage is doubtful, and when it is not the 
sufferer who is to reap the expected benefit ! On 
this principle the soldier places himself at the can- 
non's mouth, because the safety or future welfare of 
his country can be purchased at no other price. 
On this principle a pious son denies the wishes of 
his heart, and remains unmarried, that he may sus- 
tain a helpless parent. Christianity is not therefore 
at all peculiar in asserting the claims of higher, over 
lower reasons of conduct, in peculiar circumstances , 
or in demanding that, on special occasions, the en- 
joyments of life, and life itself, should be held cheap, 
or abandoned. 

Our Lord and his ministers explicitly enjoined 
such sacrifices, whenever the interests of the present 
and of the future life came in competition : and 
themselves set the example of the self-denial which 
they recommended. Nothing can be more clear 



204 INGREDIENTS OF THE 

than the rule of bodily sacrifice maintained and 
exemplified in the New Testament ; and this rule is 
in perfect accordance with the dictates of good 
sense, and with the common practice of mankind. 
Fasting, celibacy, martyrdom, and such like con- 
trarieties to the " will of the flesh," stand all on the 
same ground in the system of Christian morals : they 
are ills which a wise and pious man will cheerfully 
endure whenever he is so placed that they cannot be 
avoided without damage or hazard to the soul, or to 
the souls of others. But when no such alternative 
is presented, then the voluntary infliction becomes, 
as well in religious as in secular affairs, a folly, an 
impiety, and often a crime. To die without neces- 
sity, or to inflict one's self without reason, is not only 
an absurdity ; but a sin. 

And how immensely is this folly and immorality 
aggravated, when it is found that the voluntary suf- 
fering, instead of being simply useless, becomes, in 
its consequences, highly pernicious ; and when, by 
abundant evidence, it is proved to generate the very 
worst corruptions and perversions to which human 
nature is liable ! Such, clearly, are the inflictions of 
the monastic life — the solitude, the abstinence, the 
celibacy, the poverty ! 

The rule of Christian martyrdom is precise and 
unequivocal, and is such as absolutely to exclude 
every sort of spontaneous heroism. The motive 
also by which the Christian should be sustained, is 
of a heart-affecting, not of an exciting kind ; and the 
style of the apostles when alluding to this subject, 
is singularly sedate and reserved ; nor is an idea in- 



ANCIENT MONACHISM. 205 

troduced of a kind to inflame fanatical ambition. 
The reason of this caution is obvious ; for to have 
kindled the enthusiasm of martyrdom would have 
been to nullify the demonstration intended to be 
given to the world of the truth of Christianity. So 
long as martyrdom rested on the primitive basis (and 
it rested there, with few exceptions, until miraculous 
attestations had ceased to be afforded,) it yielded 
conclusive proof of the reality of the facts affirmed 
by the confessors. That is to say, so long as Chris- 
tians suffered only when suffering could be avoided 
in no other way than by denying their profession ; 
and so long as they endured tortures, and met death, 
in a spirit not raised above a calm courage ; or even 
displayed timidity or reluctance, such sufferings af- 
forded direct demonstration of the sincerity of their 
belief; and they, having been eye-witnesses of su- 
pernatural interpositions, and being often the very 
agents of miraculous power, their sincere belief, and 
their honesty, carried with it the proof of the facts 
so attested. 

But when, at a later time, martyrdom was courted 
in a spirit of false heroism, and came to be endured 
in a corresponding style of enthusiastic excitement, 
it lost almost the whole of its value as a proof of the 
truth of Christianity. For it is well known to be 
within the compass of human nature to endure, un- 
moved and exultingly, the most extreme torments in 
fanatical adherence to a religious tenet : but such 
sufferings evince nothing more than the firmness or 
the infatuation of the victim. On the contrary, 
when the confessor has fallen into the hands of per- 



206 INGREDIENTS OF THE 

securing power by no imprudence or temerity of his 
own, and when he avails himself, with promptitude 
and calmness, of every legal and honorable means 
of self-defence or escape, and when he pleads truth 
and right in arrest of judgment, and at last yields 
to the stroke because nothing could avert it but the 
forfeiture of conscience, then it is manifest that a 
deliberate conviction is the real motive of his con- 
duct : and then also, if he have had a personal 
knowledge of the facts, for affirming which he dies, 
his death, on the surest principles of evidence, must 
be accepted as containing incontestible proof of those 
facts. 

The recluses were not the first to spoil the primi- 
tive practice of martyrdom ; but their principles 
greatly cherished the abuse when once it had been 
introduced ; and still more did their conduct and 
their writings enhance the pernicious superstitions 
which presently afterwards resulted from the foolish 
respect paid to the tombs and relics of confessors. 
These trivial and idolatrous reverences of human 
heroism can find no room of entrance until the great 
realities of Christianity have been forgotten ; and 
until the humbling and peace-giving doctrine of 
atonement has been lost sight of. The contrite 
heart, made glad by the assurance of pardon through 
the merit of him who alone has merit supereroga- 
tory, neither admits sentiments of vain glory for 
itself, nor is prone to yield excessive worship to the 
deeds of others. 

It deserves particular notice that the martyrs of 
the Reformation in England, France, Spain, and 



ANCIENT MONACHISM. 207 

Italy, with very few exceptions, suffered in a spirit 
incomparably more sedate, and more nearly allied to 
that displayed and recommended by the apostles, 
than did the Christians, generally, of the third cen- 
tury. The reason of the difference is not obscure ; 
these modern confessors understood the capital doc- 
trine of Christianity much more fully and clearly 
than did those of the age of Origen. 

Celibacy, though it may seem to be a kind of 
self-devotion less extreme than voluntary martyr- 
dom, was in fact a much greater, and a much worse 
outrage upon human nature. This fundamental 
article of the monkish system had evidently two dis- 
tinct motives : the first, and probably the originating 
cause of so extraordinary a practice, was the im- 
practicability of uniting the pleasures of seclusion 
and of lazy meditation, with the duties and burdens 
of domestic life. The alternative was unavoidable, 
either to renounce the happiness and the cares of 
husband and father, or the spiritual luxuries o.f su- 
pine contemplation. The one species of enjoyment 
offered itself precisely as the price that must be paid 
for obtaining the other.* 

* In the only places in the New Testament where celibacy is 
recommended, Matt. xix. 12, and 1 Cor. vii. 32, the reason is of this 
substantial and intelligible kind, namely, that in the case of indi- 
viduals, placed in peculiar circumstances, a single life would be ad- 
vantageous, inasmuch as it would give them better opportunity of 
serving the Lord without distraction. Precisely the same advice 
might sometimes with propriety be given to a soldier, or to a statesman : 
a high motive justifies a sacrifice of personal happiness. Nowhere 
in the discourses of our Lord, or in the writings of the apostles, is 
there to be discovered a trace of the monkish motives of celibacy — 
namely, the supposed superior sanctity of that state. 



208 INGREDIENTS OF THE 

The second motive of monkish celibacy, and 
which so gained ascendency over the first as to 
keep it almost wholly out of sight, sprung more im- 
mediately from the centre illusion of the system ; and 
the real nature of that illusion stands forward in this 
instance in a distinct and tangible form. The very 
germ of that transmuted piety, which, in the end, 
banished true religion from the church, may readily 
be brought under inspection by tracing the natural 
history of the sentiment that attributes sanctity to 
single life. 

For reasons that are obvious and highly important, 
a sentiment of pudicity, which can never be thrown 
aside without reducing man to the level — nay, below 
the level of the brutes, belongs to the primary link 
of the social system. But this feeling, necessary as 
it is to the purity and the dignity of social life, 
suggests, by a close and easy affinity of ideas, the 
supposition of guilt as belonging to indulgence ; 
and then the correlative supposition of innocence, or 
of holiness, as belonging to continence. Neverthe- 
less, feelings of this sort, when analyzed, will be 
found to have their seat in the imagination ex- 
clusively, and only by accident to implicate the 
moral sense. They belong to that class of natural 
illusions, which, in the combination of the various 
and discordant ingredients of human nature, serve 
to amalgamate what would otherwise be utterly 
incompatible. Among all the natural illusions, or, 
as they might be termed, the pseudo-moral senti- 
ments, there is not one which so nearly resembles 



ANCIENT M0NACH1SM. 209 

the genuine sense of right and wrong as this, or one 
that is so intimately blended with them. 

It is easy then to perceive the process by which 
infirm minds passed into the error of attributing 
i sanctity to celibacy. But the law of Christian 
purity knows of no such confusion of ideas. The 
very same authority which forbids adultery, enjoins 
marriage ; and so long as morality is understood to 
consist in obedience to the declared will of God, it 
can never be imagined that a man is defiled by 
living in matrimony, any more than by " eating 
with unwashen hands." But when once religion 
has passed into the imagination, and when the senti- 
ments which have their seat in that faculty have 
become predominant, so as to crush or enfeeble those 
that belong to conscience, then is it inevitable that 
the true purity which consists in " keeping the com- 
mandments," should be supplanted by that artificial 
holiness which is a mere refinement upon natural 
instincts. Under the influence of false notions of 
this sort, nothing seems so saintly as for a man to 
shrink horrifically from the touch of woman ; nothing 
scarcely so spiritually degrading as to be a husband 
and a father.* Impious and mad enthusiasm ! and 

* " Grande est et immortale, poene ultra naturam corpoream, su- 
perare luxuriam, et concupiscentise spasmeam adolescentise facibus 
aecensam animi virtute restinguere, et spiritali conatu vim genuinse 
oblectationis excludere, vivereque contra humani generis legem, des- 
picere solatia conjugii, dulcedinem contemnere liberorum, qusecumque 
esse praesentis vitae commoda possint, pro nihilo spe futurorum beati- 
tudinis computare." The Epistle of Sulpitius, de Virginitate, in 
which this passage occurs, contains, it should be confessed, much 
more good sense and good morality, in the latter part of it, than on* 



210 INGREDIENTS OF THE 

not only irreligious and absurd, but pestilent also ; 
for this same monkish doctrine of the merit of 
virginity stands convicted, on abundant evidence, of 
having transplanted the worst vices of polytheistic 
Greece into the very sanctuaries of religion ; and 
so, of infecting the nations of modern Europe with 
crimes which, had they not been kept alive in monas- 
teries, Christianity would long ago have banished 
from the earth. 

How little did the pious men, who, in the third 
century, extolled the merit of mortification, and 
petty torture, and celibacy, think of the hideous cor- 
ruptions in which these practices were to terminate ! 
A sagacity more than human was needed to foresee 
the end from the beginning. But, with the experi- 
ence of past ages before us, we may well learn to 
distrust every specious attempt to exaggerate mo- 
rality, or to attach ideas of blame to things innocent 
or indifferent. This over-doing of virtue never fails 
to divert the mind from what is substantially good, 
and is moreover the almost invariable symptom of a 
transmuted or fictitious pietism. 

II. The ancient monkery was a system of the 

would expect to find in conjunction with absurdities such as that 
above quoted. The annotator on the passage well says, that the 
Ascetics avoided the pleasures of domestic life, not because they were 
sweets, but because conjoined with great cares, which those escaped 
who lived in celibacy. Nor is it to be denied, says he, that married 
life is obnoxious to great and heavy inconveniences : nevertheless, 
if under those difficulties we live holily and religiously, our future 
recompense will surely not be less than as if, to be free from them, 
we had embraced a single life. 



ANCIENT MONACHISM. 211 

most deliberate selfishness. That solicitude for the 
preservation of individual interests which forms the 
basis of the human constitution, is so broken up and 
counteracted by the claims and pleasures of domestic 
life, that, though the principle remains, its mani- 
festations are suppressed, and its predominance 
effectually prevented, except in some few tempers 
peculiarly unsocial. But the anchoret is a selfist by 
his very profession ; and, like the sensualist, though 
his taste is of another kind, he pursues his personal 
gratifications, reckless of the welfare of others. His 
own advantage or delight, or, to use his favorite 
phrase — " the good of his soul," is the sovereign 
object of his cares. His meditations, even if they 
embrace the compass of heaven, come round, ever 
and again, to find their ultimate issue in his own 
bosom ; but can that be true wisdom which just 
ends at the point whence it started ? True wisdom 
is a progressive principle. In abjuring the use of 
the active faculties, in reducing himself, by the spell 
of vows, to a condition of physical and moral anni- 
hilation, the insulated being says to his fellows, con- 
cerning whatever might otherwise have been con- 
verted to their benefit — " It is corban ;" thus making 
void the law of love to our neighbor, by a pretended 
intensity of love to God. 

That so monstrous an immorality should have 
dared to call itself by the name of sanctity, and 
should have done so too in front of Christianity, is 
indeed amazing ; and could never have happened 
if Christianity had not first been shorn of its life- 
giving warmth, as the sun is deprived of its power 



212 INGREDIENTS OF THE 

of heat when we ascend into the rarity of upper 
space. The tendency of a taste for imaginative 
indulgences to petrify the heart has been already 
adverted to ; and it receives a signal illustration in 
the monkish life ; especially in its more perfect form 
of absolute separation from the society of man. The 
anchoret was a disjoined particle, frozen deep into 
the mass of his own selfishness, and there imbedded 
below the touch of every human sympathy. This 
sort of meditative insulation is the ultimate and 
natural issue of enthusiastic piety ; and it may be 
met with even in our own times among those who 
have no inclination to run away from the comforts 
of common life. 

III. Spiritual pride, the most repulsive of the 
religious vices, was both a main cause, and a prin- 
cipal effect of the ancient monachism. 

The particular manner in which this odious pride 
sprung up in the monastery deserves attention. That 
sort of plain and practical religion which adapts itself 
to the circumstances of common life — the religion 
taught by the apostles, a religion of love, sobriety, 
temperance, justice, fit for the use of master and 
servant, of husband and wife, of parent and child, by 
no means satisfied the wishes of those who sought in 
Christianity a delicious dream of unearthly excite- 
ments. It was therefore indispensable to imagine a 
new style of religion ; and hence arose the doctrine 
so warmly and incessantly advanced by the early 
favorers of monkery, that our Lord and his apostles 
taught a two-fold piety, and recognized an upper and 



ANCIENT MONACHISM. 213 

an under class in the church, and sanctioned the 
division of the Christian body into what might be 
termed a plebeian, and a patrician order. 

This doctrine appears more or less distinctly in 
every one of the fathers who at all favors the mo- 
nastic life. It may seem to bear analogy to the 
principle of the Grecian philosophers who had their 
common maxims for the vulgar, and their hidden 
instructions for the few. But the resemblance is 
more apparent than real : the distinction arose among 
the Christians from altogether another source. The 
church, that is to say the collective body of true 
believers, is called in the New Testament the spouse 
of Christ ; but the monks perverted the figure by 
using it distinctively, by calling individual Christians 
"the brides of Christ," and by appropriating the 
honor to those who had taken the vow of celibacy. 

The most absurd and impious abuses of language 
presently followed from this error, and such as it 
were even blasphemous to repeat. Yet some of the 
greatest writers of the times are charmed with these 
irreligious conceits. 

In accordance with this arrogant pretension, it 
was believed, that, while the Christian commonalty 
might be left to wallow in the affairs of common life 
— in business, matrimony, and such-like impurities — 
the " elect of Christ" stood on a platform, high 
lifted above the grossness of secular engagements 
and earthly passions, and were, in their Lord's 
esteem, immensely more holy, and higher in rank, as 
candidates for the honors of the future life, than the 
mass of the faithful. When this supposition became 



214 INGREDIENTS OF THE 

generally adopted and assented to, out of the monas- 
tery as well as within it, the first and natural conse- 
quence was a great depreciation of the standard of 
morals among the people. If there were admitted 
to be two rates or degrees of virtue, there must be, 
of course, two laws or rules of life : whatever there- 
fore in the Scriptures seemed to be strict, or pure, 
or elevated, was assigned to the upper code ; while 
the lower took to itself only what wore an aspect of 
laxity and indulgence. Even an attempt on the 
part of secular Christians to make advances in holi- 
ness might be condemned as a species of presump- 
tion, or as an invasion of the proprieties of the 
saintly order. Heavenly-mindedness and purity of 
heart were chartered to the regulars — the mono- 
polists of perfect grace. Alas, that the privileged 
should have availed themselves so moderately of 
their rights ! 

A second, and not less natural consequence of the 
same principle, was the formation, among the monks, 
either of an insufferable arrogance and self-compla- 
cency, or of a villanous hypocrisy — an hypocrisy 
which qualified those who sustained it to become 
the agents of every detestable knavery that might 
promote the ambitious machinations, or screen the 
debaucheries of the order. 

If a reputation for superior sanctity be ever safe 
and serviceable to a Christian, it must be when his 
conduct and temper, even to the inmost privacies 
of domestic life, are open to indifferent observers ; — 
not to the cringing servitors of a religious establish- 
ment, or to the holy man's hangers-on and accom- 



ANCIENT MONACHISM. 215 

plices, but to the children and the servants of a 
family ; — the moral vision of a child is especially 
quick and clear. He who thus lives under the eye 
of witnesses not to be deceived, and not to be bribed, 
may actually demean himself the better for being 
reputed eminently good. Not so the man who in- 
habits a den or a cell, who is seen by the world only 
through a loop-hole ; or who shows himself to an 
admiring crowd when, and where, and in what pos- 
ture he pleases. To such a one, the praise of sanc- 
tity will most often be found inscribed, on its other 
side, with a license to crime. Under circumstances 
so blasting to the simple honesty and unaffected 
humility of true piety, almost the best that charity 
can imagine is, that the hooded saint deludes him- 
self, more even than he deceives others. 

Such are the natural and almost invariable con- 
sequences — in monasteries, or out of them, of every 
ambitious attempt to render religion a something too 
elevated and too pure to be brought into contact 
with the affairs of common life. The mere en- 
deavor generates a pretension that can never be 
filled out by truth and reality ; and the deficiency 
must be made up by delusion and deception ; the 
one begetting arrogance, the other knavery. 

IV. Greediness of the supernatural formed an 
essential characteristic of the ancient monachism. 

The cares, and toils, and necessities, the refresh- 
ments and delights of common life, are the great 
teachers of common sense ; nor can there be any 
effective school of sober reason where these are 



216 INGREDIENTS OF THE 

excluded. Whoever, either by elevation of rank, 
or by peculiarity of habits, lives far removed from 
this kind of tuition, rarely makes much proficiency 
in that excellent quality of the intellect. A man 
who has little or nothing to do with other men on 
terms of open and free equality, needs the native 
sense of five, to behave himself only with a fair 
average of propriety. Absolute solitude (and seclu- 
sion in its degree) necessitates a lapse into some 
species of absurdity more or less nearly allied to in- 
sanity ; and religious solitude naturally strays into 
the regions of vision and miracle.* 

The monastery was at once the place where the 
illusions of distempered brains were the most likely 
to abound, and where the frauds which naturally 
follow in the train of such illusions could the most 
conveniently be hatched and executed. Those dun- 
geons of dimness, of silence, of absolute obedience; 
those scenes of nocturnal ceremony; those laby- 
rinths of subterrene communication; those nurse- 



* " Habitant plerique in eremo sine ullis tabernaculis quos Ana- 
choretas vocant. Vivunt herbarum radicibus : nullo unquam certo 
loco consistunt, ne ab hominibus frequententur : quas nox coegerit 
sedes habent .... Inter hujus (Sina) recessus Anachoreta esse 
aliquis ferebatur quern diu multumque qusesitum videre non potui, 
qui fere jam ante quinquaginta annos a conversatione humana re- 
motus, nullo vestis usu, setis corporis sui tectus, nuditatem suam 
divino munere vestiebat. Hie quoties eum religiosi viri adire volue- 
runt, cursu avia petens, congressus vitabat humanos. Uni tantum- 
modo ferebatur se ante quinquennium praebuisse, qui credo potenti 
iide id obtinere promeruit : cui inter multa conloquia percunctanti, 
cur homines tantopere vitaret, respondisse perhibetur, Eum qui ab 
hominibus frequentaretur non posse ab angelis frequentari." — Sulp. 
Sev. Dialog. I. 



ANCIENT MONACHISM. 217 

ries of craft and credulity, seemed as if constructed 
for the very purpose of fabricating miracles ; and, in 
fact, if all the narratives of supernatural occurrences 
that are found upon the pages of the ancient church- 
writers were numbered, incomparably the larger pro- 
portion would appear to have been connected im- 
mediately with the religious houses. The wonder 
which goes to swell the vaunted achievements of 
the sainted abbot or brother, was effected, we are 
assured — in the cell, in the chapel or church, in the 
convent-garden, in the depths of the overhanging 
forest, or upon the solitude of the neighboring 
shore ! Of all such miracles it is enough" to say, 
that whether genuine or not, they can claim no 
respect from posterity, seeing that they stand not 
within the circle of credible testimony. History — 
lover of simplicity — scorns to place them on her page 
in any other form than as evidences of the credulity, 
if not of the dishonesty of the times ! 

Many laborious and voluminous discussions might 
have been saved, if the simple and very reasonable 
rule had been adopted of waiving investigation into 
the credibility of any narrative of supernatural or 
pretended supernatural events, said to have taken 
place upon consecrated ground, or under sacred 
roofs. Fanes, caves, groves, churches, convents, 
cells, are places in which the lover of history will 
make but a transient stay : and he may easily find 
better employment than in sifting the evidence on 
which rest such stories as that of the roof-descended 
oil, used at the baptism of Clovis ; or that of the 
relics discovered by Ambrose for the confutation of 
1Q 



218 INGREDIENTS OF THE 

royal error, and a thousand others of like nature. 
Those who, reading church history cursorily, are 
perplexed by the frequency of suspicious miracle, 
are probably not aware, generally, how very large a 
proportion of all such annoying relations may be 
readily and reasonably disposed of by adhering to 
the rule above stated. 

The miraculous powers existing in the church 
after the apostolic age, rest under a cloud that is 
not now to be thoroughly dispelled. But with safety 
the following propositions may be affirmed : first, 
That the Christian doctrine probably received some 
miraculous attestations after the death of the apos- 
tles ; secondly, That so early as the commencement 
of the fourth century, fraudulent or deceptive pre- 
tensions to miraculous power were very frequently 
advanced ; and lastly, That at that period, and sub- 
sequently, there are instances, not a few, of a cer- 
tain sort of sincerity and fervor in religion, conjoined 
with very exceptionable attempts to acquire a 
thaumaturgal reputation. These deplorable cases 
deserve particular attention, especially as they show 
what are the natural fruits of fictitious pietism. 

If we choose to read the church history of the 
early centuries in the spirit of frigid scepticism, all 
the toil and perplexity that belong to the exercise of 
cautious and candid discrimination will be at once 
saved ; and we shall, in every instance, where super- 
natural interposition is alleged, and whatever may 
be the quality of the evidence, or the character of 
the facts, take up that obvious explanation which is 
offered, by attributing a greedy credulity to the 



ANCIENT MONACHISM. 219 

laity of those times, and a villanous and shameless 
knavery to the clergy. But this short method, how 
satisfactory soever it may be to indolence, or how 
gratifying soever to malignity, can never approve 
itself to those who are at once well informed of facts, 
and accustomed to analyze evidence with precision. 
The compass of human nature includes many mo- 
tives, deep, and intricate, of which infidelity never 
dreams, and which, in its unobservant arrogance, it 
can never comprehend. 

Long before the time when ecclesiastical narra- 
tives of supernatural occurrences assume a charac- 
ter decidedly suspicious, or manifestly faithless, the 
great facts of Christianity had, with a large class of 
persons, and especially with the recluses, become 
the objects of day-dream contemplation, and formed 
rather the furniture of a theatre of celestial machin- 
ery, than the exciting causes of simple faith, and 
hope, and joy. The divine glories, the brightness 
of the future life, the history and advocacy of the 
Mediator, the agency of angels, and of demons, were 
little else, to many, than the incentives of intellectual 
intoxication. When once this misuse of religious 
ideas had gained possession of the mind, it brought 
with it an irresistible prurience, asking for the 
marvellous, just as voluptuousness asks for the 
aliments of pleasure. This demand will be pecu- 
liarly importunate among those who have to uphold 
their faith in the front of a gainsaying world ; and 
who would much rather confound the scoffer by the 
blaze of a new miracle, than convince him by an 
argumentative appeal to an old one. 



220 INGREDIENTS OF THE 

The first step towards the pseudo-miraculous is 
taken without doing any violence to conscience, and 
little even to good sense ; provided that opinions of 
a favoring kind are generally prevalent. Good, 
and even judicious men, might be so under the influ- 
ence of the imagination as to have their sleep hurried 
with visions, and their waking meditations quickened 
by unearthly voices ; and might complacently report 
such celestial favors to greedy hearers, without a 
particle of dishonest consciousness.* Thus the taste 
for things extraordinary was at once cherished and 
powerfully sanctioned by the example of men emi- 
nently wise and holy. Then, with an inferior class 
of men, the progression from illusions, real and 
complete, to such as were in part aided by a little 
spontaneity and contrivance, and which, though 
somewhat unsatisfactory to the narrator, were de- 
voured without scruple by the hearer, could not be 
difficult. The temptation to produce a commodity 
so much in demand was strong ; often too strong for 
those whose moral sense had been debilitated by an 
habitual inebriety of the imagination. Another step 
towards religious fraud was more easily taken than 
avoided, when it was eagerly looked for by open- 
mouthed credulity, and when the church might 
cheaply and securely be glorified, and Gentilism 
triumphantly confuted. The plain ground of Chris- 

* The two signal instances may be mentioned of Cyprian and 
Augustine, men whose honesty and sincerity will not be questioned 
by any one who himself possesses the sympathies of virtue and in- 
tegrity. They were both carried by the spirit of their times almost 
to the last stage of credulity and self-delusion ; but the latter much 
farther than the former. 



ANCIENT MONACHISM. 221 

tian integrity having once been abandoned, the 
shocks of a downward progress towards the most 
reprehensible extreme of deception were not likely 
to awaken remorse. 

Practices, therefore, which, viewed in their naked 
merits, must excite the detestation of every Christian 
mind, might insensibly gain ground among those who 
were far from deserving the designation of thorough 
knaves. They were fervent and laborious in their 
zeal to propagate Christianity ; they believed it cor- 
dially, and themselves hoped for eternal life in their 
faith ; and in the strength of this hope were ready 
" to give their bodies to be burned." They prayed, 
they watched, they fasted, and crucified the flesh, 
and did everything which an enthusiastical intensity 
of feeling could prompt ; and this feeling prompted 
them to promote the gospel, as well by juggling as 
by preaching. 

But had not these religious forgers read the un- 
bending morality of the gospel ? Or, reading it, was 
it possible that they could think the sacrifice of 
honesty an acceptable offering to the God of truth ? 
The difficulty can be solved only by calculating duly 
the influence of imaginative pietism in paralyzing the 
conscience ; and if the facts of the case still seem 
hard to comprehend, it will be necessary, for illus- 
tration, to recur to instances that may be furnished, 
alas ! by most Christian communities in our own 
times. Is it impossible to find individuals fervent, 
and in a certain sense sincere, in their devotions, 
and zealous and liberal in their endeavors to diffuse 
Christianity, and, perhaps, in many respects amia- 



'Z'l'Z INGREDIENTS OF THE 

ble, who, nevertheless, admit into their habitual 
course of conduct very gross contrarieties to the 
plainest rules of Christian morality ? When in- 
stances of this sort are under discussion, it is alike 
unsatisfactory to affirm of the parties in question, 
that they are, in the common sense of the term, 
hypocrites ; or to grant that their piety is genuine, 
but defective. The first supposition, though it may 
cut the difficulty, does not by any means nicely ac- 
cord with the facts : and the second puts contempt 
upon the most explicit and solemn declarations of 
our Lord and his ministers, whose style of enforcing 
the divine law will never allow those who are fla- 
grantly vicious, those who are " workers of iniquity/' 
to be called 'imperfect Christians.' 

One alternative presents itself for the solution of 
the pressing difficulty. The religion of these delin- 
quent professors is sincere in its kind, and perhaps 
fervent ; but not less fictitious than sincere. Or 
rather the religion they profess is not Christianity, 
but an image of it. Whatever there is in the 
Gospel that may stimulate emotion without breaking 
up the conscience, has been admitted and felt ; but 
the heart has not been made " alive towards God." 
Repentance has had no force, the desire of pardon 
no intensity. Certain vices may be shunned and 
reprobated, and others as freely indulged ; for nothing 
is really inconsistent with the dreams of religious 
delusion — except only the waking energy of true 
virtue. And thus it was with many in the ancient 
church ; the stupendous objects of the unseen world 
had kindled the imagination ; and in harmony with 



ANCIENT MONACHISM. 223 

this state of mind, a supernatural heroism and* an 
unnatural style of virtue were admired and prac- 
tised, because they fed the flames of a fictitious hap- 
piness, which compensated for the renunciation of 
the pleasures of sense. In this spirit martyrdom was 
courted, and deserts were peopled, until they ceased 
to be solitudes ; and in this spirit also miracles were 
affirmed, or fabricated, not perhaps so often by 
knaves as by visionaries. 

The subject of the suspicious pretensions to mir- 
aculous power advanced by many of the ancient 
Christian writers should not be dismissed without 
remarking, that it is one thing to compose a gaudy 
narrative (de virtutibus) of the wonder-working 
powers of a saint gone to his rest in the preceding 
century, and another to be the actor in scenes of 
religious juggling. If this distinction be duly con- 
sidered, a very large mass of perplexing matter will 
at once be discharged from the page of ecclesiastical 
history, and that without doing the smallest violence 
either to charity, or to the laws of evidence. Some 
foolish presbyter, or busy monk, gifted with a talent 
of description, has collected the church tales current 
in his time, concerning a renowned father. The 
turgid biography, applauded in the monastery where 
it was produced, slipped away silently to the faithful 
of distant establishments, and without having ever 
undergone that ordeal of real and local publicity 
which authenticates common history, was suffused 
through Christendom, as it were, beneath the surface 
of notoriety, and so has come down to modern times. 



224 INGREDIENTS OF THE 

to load the memory of some good man with unmer 
ited disgrace. 

V. The practice of mystifying the Scriptures must 
be named as an especial characteristic of monkish 
religion. 

This practice was, in the first place, the natural 
fruit of a life like that of the recluses ; for the 
Bible is a directory of common life ; it is the heav- 
enly enchiridion of those who are beset with the 
cares, labors, sorrows, and temptations of the world. 
To the anchoret it presents almost a blank page : a 
style of existence so unnatural as that which he 
has chosen, it does not recognize ; his imaginary 
troubles, his frivolous duties, his visionary tempta- 
tions, his self-inflicted sufferings, and his real diffi- 
culty of maintaining virtue under the galling friction 
of a presumptuous vow, are all absolutely unknown 
to the Scriptures, which therefore to the recluse, are 
not profitable for reproof, or correction, or for in- 
struction in the false righteousness which he labors 
to establish. 

To adapt the Bible to the cell, it must of ne- 
cessity, be allegorized. Then indeed it becomes in- 
exhaustibly rich in the materials of spiritual amuse- 
ment. It was thus that the Jewish doctors, the 
authors of the Talmudical writings, found the means 
of diverting the heaviness of their leisure ; and it 
was thus, though in a different style, that the Es- 
senes of the wilderness of the Jordan whiled away 
the hours of their solitude ; and thus, yet again aftei 
another pattern, that the Christian monks, especially 



ANCIENT MONACHISM. 225 

those of Palestine* and Egypt, transmuted the words 
of truth and soberness into a tangled wreath of flimsy 
fable. 

The doctrine of a mystical sense has invariably 
been espoused by every successive body of idle re- 
ligionists ; that is to say, by all who, spurning or 
forgetting the authority which the Scriptures assert 
over the life and conscience, convert them into the 
materials of a delicious dream. The mask of alle- 
gory imposed on the Bible, serves first as a source 
of entertainment, and then as a shelter against the 
plain meaning of all passages directly condemning 
the will-worship, the fooleries, and the extravagances 
to which persons of this temper are ever addicted. 
So did the rabbis make void the law of God ; so did 
the monks ; so have all classes of modern mystics ; 
so do modern Antinomians : all have asserted a 
double, a treble, or a quadruple sense ; a mystery 
couched beneath every narrative, and every exhor- 
tation, or even hidden in single words : or they have 
descried a profound doctrine packed in the bend of 
a Samech or a Koph. Not one of the absurdities of 
the ancient monkery has been so long-lived as this : 
nor is there to be found a more certain symptom 
of the existence of fatal illusion in matters of re- 
ligion. 

VI. The monkish system recommended itself by 

* Origen, as every one knows, led the way in the Christian Church 
in this mode of interpretation. It is also well known that the monks, 
especially those of Alexandria, warmly espoused the cause of this 
ingenious writer against the bishops and clergy, who with equal 
warmth condemned his works as heretical 
10* 



226 INGREDIENTS OF THE 

astonishing feats of devotedness, and by great profi- 
ciency in the practices of artificial and spontaneous 
virtue. 

The excitements of enthusiasm are so much more 
congruous with the uncorrected impulses of human 
nature, than are the principles of genuine piety, that 
the former have usually far surpassed the latter, as 
motives, in the difficult and mortifying achievements 
of self-denial. In proportion as a system of fanati- 
cism is remote from truth, its stimulating force is 
found to be great. Thus the fakirs of India have 
carried the feats of voluntary torture far beyond any 
other order of religionists. Mohammedans, gener- 
ally, are more zealous, devout, and fervent than 
Christians. Romanists surpass Protestants in the 
solemnity, intensity, and scrupulosity of their devo- 
tional exercises. In conformity with this well-known 
principle, the monastic orders have had to boast, in 
all ages, of some prodigious instances of mortifica- 
tion, as well as of charitable heroism. And the boast 
might be allowed to win more praise than can be 
granted to it, if there were not manifest, invariably, 
in these exploits, a ferment of sinister feelings, quite 
incompatible with the simplicity and purity of Chris- 
tian virtue. 

For example, let a comparison be drawn between 
a daughter who, in the deep seclusion of private life, 
and without a spectator to applaud her virtue, cheer- 
fully devotes her prime of years to the service of an 
afflicted parent ; — and the nun, who inveigles beg- 
gars daily to the convent, where she absolves them, 
against their will, from their filth, dresses theii 



ANCIENT MONACHISM. 227 

ulcers, and cleanses their tatters. Assuredly the 
part she performs is more seemingly difficult, and 
far more revolting than that of the pious daugh- 
ter ; yet it is in fact more easy ; for the inflated 
" sister of charity"* is sustained and impelled by 
notions of heroism, and of celestial excellence, and 
by a present recompense of fame among her sister- 
hood, of all which the other does not dream, who, 
unless she were actuated by the substantial motives 
of true goodness, could never in this manner win 
the blessing of heaven. 

Self-inflicted penances, wasteful abstinences, fruit- 
less labors, sanctimonious humiliations, and all such 
like spontaneities, may fairly be classed with those 
painful and perilous sports, in pursuing which it 
often happens that a greater amount of suffering 
is endured, and of danger incurred, than ordinarily 
belongs to the services and duties of real life. But 
these freaks of the monastery, or these toils of the 
field, deserve little praise, seeing that they meet 
their immediate reward in the gratification of a 
peculiar taste. In both instances the adult child 
pleases himself in his own way, and must be deemed 
to do much if he avoids trampling down the rights 
of his neighbor. 

Fictitious virtue, if formed on the model of the 
Koran, naturally assumes the style of martial arro- 
gance, of fanatical zeal and of bluff devotion, But 
if it be the Gospels that furnish the pattern, then an 
opposite phase of sanctity is shown.. Abject lowli- 

* The charitable offices of the nuns in the hospitals of France 
ought always to be mentioned with respect find admiration. 



228 INGREDIENTS OF THE 

ness, and voluntary poverty (which is no poverty at 
all,) and ingenious austerities, and romantic exploits 
of charity, and other similar misinterpretations of 
the spirit and letter of New Testament morality, are 
combined to form a tawdry effigy of the humility, 
purity, and beneficence of Christian holiness. But 
compel the imitator to relinquish all that is heroic, 
and picturesque, and poetical in his style of behav- 
ior : oblige him to lay aside whatever makes the 
vulgar gape at his sanctity ; let him uncowl his ears, 
and cover his naked feet : ask him to acquit himself 
patiently, faithfully, Christianly, amid the non-illus- 
trious and difficult duties of common life, and he will 
find himself destitute of motive and of zest for his 
daily task. Temperance without abstinence will 
have no charm for him ; nor purity without a vow ; 
nor self-denial without austerity ; nor patience with- 
out stoicism ; nor charity without a trumpet. The 
man of sackcloth, who was a prodigy of holiness in 
the cloister, becomes, if transported into the sphere 
of domestic life, a monster of selfishness and sen- 
suality. 

Time, which insensibly aggravates the abuses of 
every corrupt system, does also furnish an apology, 
more and more valid from age to age, for the con- 
duct of the individuals who spring up, in succession, 
to act their parts within its machinery. While an- 
cient institutions rest tranquilly on their bases, while 
venerable usages obtain unquestioned submission, 
while opinion paces forwards with a slumbering step 
upon its deep- worn tracks, men are not more con- 



ANCIENT MONACHISM. 229 

scious of the enormity of the errors that may be 
chargeable upon their creeds and practices, than a 
secluded tribe is of the strangeness and inelegance 
of the national costume. This principle should 
never be lost sight of when we are estimating the 
personal character of the members of the Romish 
church before the period of the Reformation ; or 
indeed in later times, where no free and fair conflict 
of opinions has taken place. The system and its 
victims are always to be thought of apart. 

The recurrence, by a people at large, to abstract 
principles of political or religious truth, is a much 
less frequent event than the rarest of natural pheno- 
mena. It is only in consequence of shocks, happen- 
ing in the social system by no means so often as 
earthquakes do in the material, that the human mind 
is rent from its habitudes, and placed in a position 
whence it may with advantage compare its opinions 
with universal truth. The Christian church under- 
went not once the perils and benefits of such a con- 
vulsion during the long course of fifteen hundred 
years. Throughout that protracted space of time 
the men of each age, with few exceptions, quietly 
deemed that to be good which their fathers had 
thought so; and as naturally they delivered it to 
their successors, endorsed with their own solemn 
approbation. In forming an opinion, therefore, of 
the merits of individuals, justice, we need not say 
candor, demands that the whole, or almost the whole 
amount of the abstract error of the system within 
which, by accident of birth, they move, should be 
deducted from the reckoning. This sort of justice 



230 INGREDIENTS OF THE 

may especially be claimed in behalf of those who 
rather acquiesced in the religious modes of their 
times, than appeared as its active champions. Thus 
we excuse the originators and early supporters of a 
bad system, on the ground of their ignorance of its 
evil tendency and actual consequences ; and again 
we palliate the fault of its adherents in a late age, 
by pleading for them the influence of that natural 
sentiment of respect which is paid to antiquity. 

Perhaps the treatment which Jovinian and Vigi- 
lantius received from Jerom, Ambrose, and Augus- 
tine, may be thought to detract very much from the 
validity of the apology here offered for the ancient 
abettors of monachism. But the circumstances of 
the case are involved in too much obscurity to allow 
a distinct opinion to be formed on the subject. The 
protest of Jovinian against the prevailing errors of 
the church might be connected with some extrava- 
gance of belief, or some impropriety of conduct 
which prevented his testimony from being listened 
to with respect. Yet certainly the appearances of 
the case show decidedly against both Jerom and 
Ambrose. Augustine knew little personally of the 
supposed error against which he inveighed. 

These proper allowances being made, there will 
be no difficulty in turning from an indignant repro- 
bation of the monkish practices, to a charitable and 
consoling belief of the personal virtues, and even 
eminent piety of many who, in every age, have 
fretted away an unblessed existence within that 
dungeon of religious delusion — the monastery. In 
default of complete evidence, yet on the ground of 



ANCIENT MONACHISM. 231 

some substantial proof, it is allowable to hope that 
the monastic orders at all times included many spir- 
itual members.* There is even reason to believe 
that a better style of sentiment, and less extrava- 
gance, and less fanatical heat, and less knavish 
pretension, and more of humility and purity, existed 
here and there among the recluses of the tenth and 
eleventh, than among those of the fifth and sixth 
centuries. 

In the earlier period, though there might be much 
pretension to seclusion from the world, the monastery 
was in fact a house set on a hill in the midst of the 
Christian community ; and it was ever surrounded 
by an admiring multitude ; so that its inmates might 
always find a ready revenue of glorification for the 
exploits and hypocrisies of supernatural sanctity, f 
But in the later periods, and when nothing hardly 
existed without doors except feudal ignorance and 
ferocity (we speak of the monasteries of Europe), 



* The " De Imitatione Christi" alone affords proof enough of the 
possibility of the existence of elevated piety in the monastery. It 
abounds also with indications of the petty persecution to which a 
spiritual monk was exposed among his brethren. 

f Many of the ancient solitaries, far from living as their profession 
required, in seclusion, were accustomed to admit daily the visits of 
the multitude who flocked around them, to gaze at their austerities, 
to hear their harangues, or to be exorcised, or healed of their mala- 
dies. Symeon, " the man of the pillar," every day exhibited him- 
self to a gaping crowd, collected often from distant countries. St. 
Anthony, more sincere in his love of retirement, when pestered by 
the plaudits of the vulgar in Lower Egypt, withdrew into a desert 
of the Thebais ; yet even there he soon found himself surrounded, 
not only by daemons, but worse, by admirers. See Athan. Op. Vita 
S. Antonii. 



232 MONACHISM 

many of the religious houses were real seclusions, 
and very far removed from any market of vulgar 
praise. Then within these establishments, it cannot 
be doubted, that the pious few found their virtue 
much rather guarded by the envious eyes of their 
less exemplary comrades, than endangered by draw- 
ing upon itself any sort of admiration. The spiritual 
monk (let not modern prejudices refuse to admit the 
phrase), glad to hide himself from the railleries or 
spite of the lax fraternity, kept close to his cell, and 
there passed his hours, not uncheered, nor unde- 
licious, in prayer and meditation, in the perusal of 
religious books, and in the pleasant, edifying, and 
beneficial toils of transcription. Not seldom, as is 
proved by abundant evidence, the life-giving words 
of prophets and apostles were the subjects of these 
labors; nor ought it to be doubted that while, 
through a long tract of centuries, the Scriptures, 
unknown abroad, were holding their course under- 
ground, if one might so speak, waiting the time of 
their glorious emerging, they imparted the substance 
of true knowledge to many souls, pent with them in 
the same sepulchral glooms. 

The monkish system retained its ancient style, 
with little alteration, until it received an enhance- 
ment, and a somewhat new character in France, in 
the hands of the followers of Jansen, and the Port 
Royal recluses. Then the old doctrine of religious 
abstraction — of the merging of the soul in Deity, 
and of the merit and efficacy of penitential suicide, 
was revived with an intensity never before known 



IN MODERN TIMES. 233 

and was recommended by a much larger admixture 
of genuine scriptural knowledge than had ever be- 
fore been- connected with the same system, and was 
graced -by the brilliant talents and great learning of 
many of the party ; while at the same time the en- 
durance of persecution gave depth, force, and hero- 
ism, to the sentiments of the sect. 

It was inevitable that whatever of good might 
arise within the church of Rome, and remain in 
allegiance to it, must pass over to the ancient and 
venerated form of monkish piety. The religion of 
the monastery was the only sort of devotedness and 
seriousness known to, or sanctioned by, that church. 
A new sect of fervent religionists could therefore do 
no otherwise than either fall into that style, or de- 
nounce it ; and the latter would have been to break 
from Rome, and to side with Huguenots. 

Embarrassed at every step by their professed sub- 
mission to the authority of the popes, which they 
perpetually felt to be at variance with the duty they 
owed to God, and heavily oppressed and galled by 
their necessary acquiescence in the flagrant errors 
of the church in which alone they thought salvation 
could be had, and still more deeply injured by their 
own zealously loved ascetic doctrine, these good 
men obtained possession, and made profession of, the 
great truths of Christianity under an incomparably 
heavier weight of disadvantage than has been sus- 
tained by any other class of Christians from the apos- 
tolic to the present times. They have left in their 
voluminous and valuable writings, a body of divinity, 
doctrinal and practical, w r hich, when the peculiar 



234 MONACHISM 

circumstances of its production are considered, pre- 
sents a matchless proof of the intrinsic power of 
Christianity, upbearing so ponderous a mass of 
error. 

Nevertheless, while the Port Royal divines and 
their friends are perused with pleasure and advan- 
tage, and while the reader is often inclined to admit 
that in depth, fervor, and solemnity of religious 
feeling, in richness and elevation of thought, in holy 
abstraction from earthly interests, in devotedness of 
zeal, and in the exemplification of some difficult 
duties, they much surpass the divines of England, he 
still feels, and sometimes when he can hardly assign 
the grounds of his dissatisfaction, that a vein of illu- 
siveness runs through every page. Although the 
great principles of religion are much more distinctly 
and more feelingly produced than generally they are 
in the writings of the fathers, and though the evi- 
dence of genuine and exalted piety is abundant and 
unquestionable : yet is there an infection of idealism, 
tainting every sentiment ; a mist of the imagination, 
obscuring every doctrine. In turning from the 
French writers of this school to our own standard 
divines, the reader is conscious of a sensation that 
might be compared to that felt by one who escapes 
into pure air from a. chamber in which, though it was 
possible to live, respiration was oppressed by the 
presence of mephitic exhalations. 

Enfeebled by the enthusiasm to which they so 
fondly clung, the piety of these admirable men failed 
in the force necessary to carry them triumphantly 
through the conflict with their atrocious enemy — 






IN MODERN TIMES. 235 

"the Society." They were themselves in too many 
points vulnerable, to close fearlessly with their ad- 
versary ; and they grasped the sword of the Spirit 
in too infirm a manner to be able to drive home a 
deadly thrust. Had it been otherwise, had they 
been free, not merely from the shackle of submission 
to Rome, but free from the debilitating influence of 
mysticism and monkish notions, their moral force, 
their talent, their learning, and their self-devotion, 
might have sufficed, first, for the overthrow of their 
immediate antagonist, whose bad cause, and worse 
arguments were hardly supported against the aug- 
menting weight of public opinion, even by the whole 
power of the court. Then might they, not improb- 
ably, have supplied the impulse necessary to achieve 
the emanipation of the Gallican church from the 
thraldom of Rome ; an event which seemed, more 
than once, to be on the eve of accomplishment. 
And if, at the same moment, the Protestants of 
France had received just that degree of indulgence 
— of mere sufferance — which was demanded, we do 
not say by justice and mercy, but by a politic regard 
to the national welfare ; and if by these means a 
substantially sound, though perhaps partial reform 
had taken place within the dominant church, and 
dissent been allowed to spread itself amicably 
through the interstices of the ecclesiastical struct- 
ure ; if religious liberty, not indeed in the temper 
of republican contumacy, but in the Christian spirit 
of quiet and grateful humility, had taken root in 
France, is it too much to say that Atheism could 
never have become, as it did, the national opinion 



236 MONACHISM 

and that the consequent solution of the social sys- 
tem in blood could never have happened ? 

The Jansenist, and the inmates of Port Royal, 
and many of their favorers, displayed a constancy 
that would doubtless have carried them through the 
fires of martyrdom. But the intellectual courage 
necessary to bear them fearlessly through an exam- 
ination of the errors of the papal superstition could 
have sprung only from a healthy force of mind, 
utterly incompatible with the dotings of religious 
abstraction, with the petty solicitudes of sackclothed 
abstinence, with the trivial ceremonials of the daily 
ritual, with the prim niceties of behavior that pin 
down the body and soul of a Romish regular to his 
parchment-pattern of artificial sanctity. The Jan- 
senists had not such courage ; if they worshipped 
not the beast, they cringed before him ; he planted 
his dragon-foot upon their necks, and their wisdom 
and their virtues were lost forever to France ! 

The monk of Wittemberg had taken a bolder and 
a better course. When he began to find fault with 
Rome, he rejected, not only its own flagrant and 
recent corruptions : but the many delusions it had 
inherited from the ancient church ; and after a short 
struggle with the prejudices of his education, he be- 
came, not only no papist, but no monk. Full fraught 
with the principles and spirit of the Bible, he de- 
nounced, as well the venerable errors of the fathers, 
as the scarlet sins of the mother of impurities ; and 
was as little a disciple of Jerom, of Gregory, and of 
Basil, as of the doctors of the Vatican. 
* The English reformers trod the ground of theo 



IN MODERN TIMES. 237 

logical inquiry with the same manly step ; and that 
firm step shook the monasteries to the dust. Those 
great and good men went back to the Scriptures, 
where they found at once the great realities of re- 
ligion — a condemning law, a justifying Gospel, and a 
provision of grace for a life of true holiness. With 
these substantial principles in their hearts, they 
spurned whatever was trivial and spurious, and amid 
the fires of persecution, they reared the structure — 
a structure still unshaken — of religion for England, 
upon * the foundation of the apostles and prophets." 
Had there existed a taste for mysticism, a fondness 
for penitential austerities, a cringing deference to 
the fathers, among the divines of the time of Ed- 
ward VI., such a disposition must, so far as known 
causes are to be calculated upon, have utterly spoiled 
the reformation in England; or have postponed it a 
hundred years. 



SECTION X. 

CONSIDERATIONS ON THE PROBABLE TRIUMPH OF CHRIS- 
TIANITY, SUBMITTED TO THOSE WHO MISUSE THE 
TERM ENTHUSIASM. 

To waive the exercise of discrimination, can, 
under no imaginable circumstances, be advantageous 
to any man ; nor is it ever otherwise than absurd 
to persist in an error which might be corrected by 
a moment's attention to obvious facts. But assuredly 
some such suspension of good sense has taken place 
with those who accustom themselves to designate, in 
a mass, as Enthusiasts, the many thousands of their 
countrymen, of all communions, who, at the present 
time, make profession of the doctrines of the Re- 
formation. 

All who are not wilfully ignorant must know, 
that what is vulgarly called " the religious world," 
now includes, not only myriads of the lower, and 
middle, and imperfectly educated classes, in relation 
to whom self-complacent arrogance may easily find 
pretexts of scorn; and not only many of the opulent 
and the noble ; but a fair proportion also of all the 
talent, and learning, and brilliancy of mind, that 
adorns the professional circles, and that vivifies the 



ABUSE OF THE TERM ENTHUSIASM. 239 

literature of the country. What appropriateness, 
then, is there left to language, if a phrase of super- 
cilious import is to be attached to the names of men 
of vigorous understanding, and energetic character, 
and eminent acquirement ;■*-- of men successful in 
their several courses, and accomplished in whatever 
gives grace to human nature ? When those who in 
no assignable good quality can be deemed inferior 
to their competitors on the arena of life, are, on 
account of their religious opinions and practices, 
called Enthusiasts, it is evident that nothing is 
actually effected but the annulling of the contume- 
lious power of the term so misused. We may indeed, 
in this manner, neutralize the significance of a word ; 
or we may draw upon ourselves, the imputation of 
malignant prejudice ; but we cannot reduce from 
their rank those who stand firmly on the high stages 
of literary or philosophical eminence. 

But if arrogance and malignity itself be ashamed 
of so flagrant an abuse of the word enthusiast, then 
neither ought that epithet (unless where special proof 
can be adduced) to be assigned to the multitude, 
holding the very same opinions : for the eminent 
few, seeing that they profess these tenets, and adhere 
to these practices deliberately, and explicitly, must 
be allowed the privilege of redeeming their belief 
and usages from contempt, by whomsoever . main- 
tained. 

An opinion gravely professed by a man of sense 
and education, demands always, respectful consider- 
ation — demands, and actually receives it from those 
whose own sense and education give them a correla- 



240 PROBABLE SPREAD 

tive right : and whoever offends against this sort ot 
courtesy may fairly be deemed to have forfeited the 
privileges it secures. But retaliation is declined by 
those who might use it, and it is declined on the 
ground, not only of Christian meekness, but of com- 
miseration towards such violators of candor and 
good manners, whom they hold to be acting under 
the influence of an infatuation, at once deplorable 
and fatal. 

That this infatuation should, in any great number 
of instances, be dispelled by the mere showing of 
reasons, is what the religionists, the " Enthusiasts," 
by no means expect : they too well understand the 
nature of the malady, and too well know its invet- 
eracy, to imagine that it may be dissipated by force 
of argument, even though the cause were in the 
hands of a college of dialecticians. Nevertheless, 
they entertain an expectation (and have evidence to 
show in support of it) which, if it be realized, will 
supersede many difficult controversies, and rob im- 
piety forever of its only effectual prop, the suffrage 
of the many. This expectation is nothing less than 
that Christianity — or, for the sake of distinctness, 
let it be said the religion of the Reformation — the 
religion of Wycliffe, and Latimer, and Cranmer, 
and Jewel, and Hooker, and Owen, and Howe, and 
Baxter — will gain, ere long, an unquestioned ascen- 
dency, and will bear down infidelity and false 
doctrine, and absorb schism, and possess itself of 
the substance of power, which is moral power, and 
will thus rule the family of man. 

In support of a belief like this, many reasons 






OF CHRISTIANITY. 241 

might be urged, some of which can be expected to 
have weight only with the religious ; while others 
may well claim attention from all (whatever may 
be their opinion of Christianity) who are at once 
competent and accustomed to anticipate the prob- 
able course of human affairs. 

There are three distinct methods in which an 
inquiry of this sort might be conducted : of these, 
the first is the method of philosophical calculation, 
on the known principles of human nature, and 
which, without either denying or assuming the 
truth of Christianity, forecasts, from past events and 
present appearances, the probable futurity. To 
pursue such calculations efficiently, prepossessions 
of all kinds, both sceptical and religious, should be 
held in abeyance, while the mere facts that belong 
to the problem are contemplated as from the remote- 
ness of a neutral position. 

The reader and writer of this page may each have 
formed his estimate of the intrinsic force and validity 
of certain opinions ; but this private estimate may 
happen to be much above, or much below the level 
which reason would approve ; and, be it what it may, 
it can avail nothing for our present purpose. If we 
are to calculate the probable extension or extinction 
of those opinions, we must consult the evidence of 
facts on a large scale ; and especially must observe 
what manifestations of intrinsic power they have 
given on certain peculiar and critical occasions. 
This is the only course that can be deemed satis- 
factory, or that is conformed to the procedures of 
modern science. We do not now wish to ask a 

11 



242 PROBABLE SPREAD 

seraph if such or such a dogma is held to be true in 
heaven ; but what we have to do is to learn, from 
the suffrage of the millions of mankind, whether it 
has a permanent power to command and to regain 
ascendency over the human mind. This question 
must be asked of history ; and we must take care to 
open the book at those pages where the great eras 
of religious revolution are described. Having 
glanced at the past, our next business will be to 
look at the present : this kind of divination is the only 
one known to the principles of philosophical inquiry. 

The early triumph of the Gospel over the fas- 
cinating idolatries and the astute atheism of Greece 
and Rome has been often insisted upon, (and con- 
clusively) as evidence of its truth. But with that 
argument we have nothing now to do ; yet if the 
subject were not a very hackneyed one, it might, 
well be brought forward, in all its details, in proof of 
a different point — namely, the innate power of the 
religion of the Bible to vanquish the hearts of men. 
An opponent may here choose his alternative ; either 
let him grant tha«t Christianity triumphed because it 
was true and divine; or let him deny that it had any 
aid from heaven. In the former case we shall be 
entitled to infer that the religion of God must at 
length universally prevail ; or in the latter we may 
strongly argue, that this doctrine possesses little 
less than an omnipotence of intrinsic force, by 
which it obtained success under circumstances of 
opposition such as made its triumph seem, even to 
its enemies, miraculous ; and on this ground the ex- 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 243 

peetation of its future prevalence cannot be thought 
unreasonable. 

But if there were room to imagine that tte first 
spread of Christianity was owing rather to an acci- 
dental conjuncture of favoring circumstances than 
to its real power over the human mind, or if it 
might be thought that any such peculiar virtue was 
all spent and exhausted in its first expansive effort, 
then it is natural to look to the next occasion on 
which the opinions of mankind were put in fer- 
mentation, and to watch in what manner the system 
of the Bible then rode over the high billows of 
political, religious, and intellectual commotion. It 
was a fair trial for Christianity, and a trial essen- 
tially different from its first, when, in the fifteenth 
century, after having been corrupted in every part 
to a state of loathsome ulceration, it had to contend 
for existence, and to work its own renovation, at 
the moment of the most extraordinary expansion of 
the human intellect that has ever happened. At 
that moment, when the splendid literature of the 
ancient world started from its tomb, and kindled a 
blaze of universal admiration ; at that moment, when 
the first beams of sound philosophy broke over the 
nations ; and when the revival of the useful arts 
gave at once elasticity to the minds of the million, 
and a check of practical influence to the minds of 
the few ; at the moment when the necromancy of 
the press came into play to expose and explode nec- 
romancy of every other kind; and when the discov- 
ery of new continents, and of a new path to the old, 
tended to supplant a taste of whatever is visionary, 



244 PROBABLE SPREAD 

by imparting a vivid taste for what is substantial , 
at such a time, which seemed to leave no chance of 
continued existence to aught that was not in its 
nature vigorous, might it not confidently have been 
said — This must be the crisis of Christianity ? if it 
be not inwardly sound, if it have not a true hold 
of human nature, if it be a thing of feebleness and 
dotage, fit only for cells, and cowls, and the pre- 
cincts of spiritual despotism ; if it be not adapted 
to the world of action, if it have no sympathy 
with the feelings of men — of freemen ; nothing can 
save it : no power of princes, no devices of priests, 
will avail to rear it anew, and to replace it in the 
veneration of the people ; at least not in any country 
where has been felt the refreshing gale of intel- 
lectual life. The result of this crisis need not be 
narrated. 

It may even be doubted, had not Christianity 
been fraught with power, if all the influence of 
kings, or craft of priests, could have upheld it in any 
part of Europe, after the revival of learning ; and 
certainly not in those countries which received, at 
one and the same time, the invigoration of political 
liberty, of science, and of commerce. 

Whether the religion for which the reformers 
suffered, " was from heaven or of men," is not our 
question ; but whether it is not a religion of robust 
constitution, framed to endure, and to spread, and 
to vanquish the hearts of men ? With the history 
of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in view, it is 
asked if Christianity be a system that must always 
lean upon ignorance, and craft, and despotism, and 



OF CIIRISTIANITV. 245 

which, when those rotten stays are removed, must 
fail and be seen no more ? 

Yet another species of trial was in store to give 
proof of the indestructibility and victorious power 
of Christianity. It remained to be seen whether, 
when the agitations, political and moral, that were 
consequent upon the great schism which had taken 
place in Europe had subsided, and when the season 
of slumber and exhaustion came on, and when hu- 
man reason, strengthened and refined by physical 
science, and elegant literature, should awake fully 
to the consciousness of its powers ; whether then 
the religion of the Bible could retain its hold of the 
nations ; or at least of those of them that enjoyed, 
without limit, the happy influences of political lib- 
erty, and intellectual light. This was a sort of 
probation which Christianity had never before passed 
through. 

And what were the omens under which it entered 
upon the new trial of its strength ? Were the 
friends of Christianity at that moment of portentous 
conflict aw r ake, and vigilant, and stout-hearted, and 
thoroughly armed to repel assaults ? The very 
reverse was the fact ; for at the instant when the 
atheistical conspiracy made its long-concerted, well- 
advised and consentaneous attack, there was scarcely 
a pulse of life left in the Christian body, in any one 
of the Protestant states. The old superstitions had 
crawled back into many of their ancient corners. 
In other quarters the spirit of protestation against 
those superstitions had breathed itself away in trivial 
wranglings, or had given place to infidelity — in- 



246 PROBABLE SPREAD 

fidelity aggravated by stalled hypocrisy. The Church 
of England, the chief prop of modern Christianity, 
was then, to a great extent, torpid, and fainting 
under the incubus, either of false doctrine, or of a 
secular spirit; at least it seemed incapable of the 
effort which the peril of the time demanded : few 
indeed of her sons were panoplied, and sound- 
hearted, as champions in such a cause should be. 
Within a part only of a small body of Dissenters, 
(for a part was smitten with the plague of heresy) 
and that part in great measure disqualified from 
free and energetic action by rigidities, and scruples, 
and divisions, was contained almost all the religious 
life and fervor anywhere to be found in Chris- 
tendom. 

Meanwhile the infidel machinators had chosen 
their ground at leisure, and were wrought to the 
highest pitch of energy by a confident, and, as it 
might seem, a well-founded hope of success. They 
were backed by the secret wishes, or the undis- 
sembled cheerings of almost the entire body of edu- 
cated men throughout Europe. They used the 
only language then common to the civilized world, 
and a language which might be imagined to have 
been framed and finished designedly to accomplish 
the demolition of whatever was grave and venerated ; 
a language, beyond any other, of raillery, of insinu- 
ation, and of sophistry ; a language of polished 
missiles, whose temper could penetrate not only the 
cloak of imposture, but the shield of truth. 

At the same portentous moment the shocks and 
upheavings of political commotion opened a thou- 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 247 

sand fissures in the ancient structure of moral and 
religious sentiment ; and the enemies of Christianity- 
surprised by unexpected success, rushed forward to 
achieve, as they thought, an easy triumph. The 
firmest and the wisest friends of old opinions de- 
sponded, and many believed that a few years would 
see Atheism the universal doctrine of the western 
nations, as well as military despotism the only form 
of government. 

It is difficult to imagine a single advantage that 
was lacking to the promoters of infidelity, or a single 
circumstance of peril and ill-omen that was not pres- 
ent to deepen the gloom of the friends of religion. 
The actual issue of that signal crisis is before our 
eyes in the freshness of a recent event. Christianity 
— we ask not whether for the benefit or the injury 
of the world — has triumphed ; the mere fact is all 
that concerns our argument. But shall it be said, 
or if said, believed, that the late resurrection of the 
religion of the Bible has been managed in the cabi- 
nets of monarchs ? Have kings and emperors given 
this turn to public opinion, which now compels infi- 
delity to hide its shame behind the very mask of 
hypocrisy that it had so lately torn from the face of 
the priest ? To come home to facts with which all 
must be familiar : Has there not been heard, within 
the last few years, from the most enlightened, the 
most sober-minded, and the freest people of Europe, 
a firm, articulate, spontaneous, and cordial expression 
of preference, and of enhanced veneration towards 
Christianity ? Again, then, we ask — not if this 
religion be true, but if it have not, even beneath 



248 PROBABLE SPREAD 

our own observation, given proof of indestructible 
vigor ? 

The spread of the English stock, and language, 
and literature, over the North American continent 
has afforded a distinct and very significant indication 
of the power of Christianity to retain its hold of the 
human mind, and of its aptness to run hand-in-hand 
with civilization, even when unaided by those secular 
succors to which its enemies in malice, and some 
of its friends in over-caution, are prone to attribute 
too much importance. The tendency of republican- 
ism, which obviously has some strong affinity with 
infidelity, and the connection of the colonies, at the 
moment of their revolt, with France, and the preva- 
lence of a peculiarly eager and uncorrected com- 
mercial temper, and the absence of every sort and 
semblance of restraint upon opinion, were concurrent 
circumstances, belonging to the infanc} 7 of the Amer- 
ican Union, of a kind which put to the severest test 
the instrinsic power of Christianity, in retaining its 
hold of the human mind. Could infidel experiment- 
ers have wished for conditions more equitable, under 
which to try the respective forces of the opposing 
systems ? 

And what has been the issue 1 It is true that 
infidelity holds still its ground in the United States, 
as in Europe ; and there, as in Europe, keeps com- 
pany with whatever is debauched, sordid, oppressive, 
reckless, ruffian-like. But at the same time Chris- 
tianity, has gained rather than lost ground, and 
shows itself there in a style of as much fervor and 
zeal as in England ; and perhaps, even it has the 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 249 

advantage in these respects. Wherever, on that 
continent, good order and intelligence are spreading, 
there also the religion of the Bible spreads. And if 
it be probable that the English race, and language, 
and institutions, will, in a century, pervade its des- 
erts, all appearances favor the belief that the edifices 
of Christian worship will bless every landscape of 
the present wilderness that shall then " blossom as 
the rose." 

Before, in pursuing this method of frigid calcula- 
tion, the Christian doctrine be weighed against the 
several systems with which it must contend ere it 
wins its universal triumph, it is proper to inquire — 
what is the probability that a collision will actually 
take place. To estimate fairly this probability, those 
who are but slenderly acquainted with the religious 
world, in the British Islands, in America, and in the 
Protestant states of the continent, must understand, 
much better than generally they do, the precise na- 
ture of the remarkable revolution that has, within 
the last thirty years, been effected in the senti- 
ments of Christians on the subject of the diffusion 
of their religion. Such slenderly-informed persons 
may very naturally imagine that the prodigious 
efforts that have of late been made to. diffuse Chris- 
tianity through the world have sprung simply from 
a heat and excitement, in its nature transient, and 
which, therefore, must be expected soon to subside. 
But this supposition will be found to be incomplete 
and erroneous. A stir and kindling of feeling has 
no doubt happened ; but this feeling, and the activi- 
11* 



250 PROBABLE SPREAD 

ties which followed from it, have given occasion to 
the resurrection, so to speak, of a capital article of 
Christian morals, which, after lying almost latent for 
centuries, stands forth in undisputed and prominent 
authority in the modern code of religious duty. 
This recovered principle is now constantly recog- 
nized and enforced ; and it is seen to exert its influ- 
ence, not merely within the circles of central move- 
ment, but even in the remotest orbits of religious 
feeling, where warmth and energy are manifestly 
not excessive. 

The founder of Christianity left with his disciples 
the unlimited injunction to go forth into all the 
world, and to preach the Gospel to every creature,, 
This command, corroborated by others of equivalent 
import, and enforced by the very nature of the Chris- 
tian doctrine, and by the spirit of Christian charity, 
is now understood and acknowledged, in a manner 
new to the church, to be of universal obligation, so 
that no Christian, how obscure soever may be his 
station, or small his talents, or limited his means, can 
be held to stand altogether excused from the duty of 
fulfilling, in some way, the last mandate of his Lord. 
Thus understood, this command makes every be- 
liever a preacher and a missionary ; or at least 
obliges him to see to it, so far as his ability extends, 
that the labors of diffusive evangelization are actually 
performed by a substitute. 

Before the commencement of the recent mission- 
ary efforts, there had been missions to the heathen. 
But these, if carried on with anything more than a 
perfunctory assiduity, were anomalous to the general 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 251 

feeling of Christians, and sprung from the exemplary- 
zeal of individuals. But the modern missions are 
maintained neither by the zeal of the few, nor by 
the mere zeal of the many ; but rather by the deep- 
seated impulsive power of a grave conviction, press- 
ing on the conscience even of the inert and the self- 
ish — and much more on the hearts of the fervent 
and devoted — that a Christian has no more liberty 
to withhold his aid and service from these evangeliz- 
ing associations than he has to abandon the duties 
of common life ; and that, for a man to profess hope 
in Christ, and to deny what he might spare to pro- 
mote the diffusion of the Gospel, is the most egre- 
gious of all practical solecisms. 

Those who are ignorant of this remarkable revo- 
lution of sentiment, or who may be sceptical con- 
cerning it, would do well to take up, at hazard, any 
dozen of the discourses, and reports, and tracts, that 
are yearly, and monthly, and weekly, flowing from 
the religious press, and among which they will hardly 
find one that does not assume this as an admitted 
principle, and as the ultimate motive of every horta- 
tory appeal. And if, among these ephemera, there 
are any, and such are not seldom to be found, that 
bear the stamp of superior intelligence, it will be 
seen almost invariably, that the reasoner summons 
all the force of his mind, not so much to prove that 
every Christian is bound to promote the diffusion 
of scriptural knowledge, as by some new ingenuity 
of illustration to place the acknowledged duty in a 
stronger light, or to show in what manner it bears 
upon the specific object for which he pleads. And 



252 PROBABLE SPREAD 

it is to be noted that these popular addresses ex- 
hibit, for the most part, much more of the gravity 
and calmness which naturally belong to the style of 
those who feel that they are standing upon undis- 
puted ground, than of the solicitude, or the inflam- 
matory verbosity and turgidness of writers who are 
laboring to fan a decaying blaze of indefensible 
enthusiasm. 

Or again : it may well be inferred that the modern 
missionary zeal springs from motives of a substantial 
and permanent kind, since they affect, without ex- 
ception, every body of Christians (holding the doc- 
trines of the Reformation) and are felt in the same 
manner by the Christians of every Protestant com- 
munity of Europe. And moreover the feeling has 
not declined, but has sensibly increased since the 
first years of its activity ; and it has endured the 
trial, in some instances, of severe and long- con- 
tinued discomfitures, or of partial success. These 
are indications of a spring of action far more sedate 
and enduring than any feverish excitement can ever 
supply. 

But if the extent, and the power, and the promise 
of the existing missionary zeal are to be duly esti- 
mated, the inquirer should visit the homes of our 
religious folks ; or enter the schools in which their 
children are trained, and there learn what is the 
doctrine inculcated upon those who are rising up to 
take their place on the arena of life : or let him 
listen to the hymns they lisp, and examine the tracts 
they read, and he will meet the same great principle 
in a thousand manners enforced, namely — That it m» 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 253 

the duty of every Christian, young or old, rich or 
poor, to take part in sending the Gospel to all 
nations. Or let the observer notice the Missionary 
Box, in the school-room, in the nursery, in the shop- 
parlor, in the farm-house kitchen, in the cottage, of 
the religious ; and let him mark the multiform con- 
trivances for swelling the amount of the revenues 
of Christian charity, devised, and zealously persisted 
in, by youths and by little ones, whose parents, at 
the same age, thought of nothing but of cakes and 
sports. 

And does all this steady movement, this wide- 
spreading and closely-compacted system of united 
effort, this mechanism in which infancy as well as 
maturity takes its part, indicate nothing for futurity ? 
Shall it all have passed away and be forgotten with 
the present generation ? If indeed it were confined 
to a sect, or to a province, or to a country, it might, 
though that were unlikely ; but not if it be the 
common style of Christian feeling in every part of 
the world where spiritual Christianity exists at all. 
Particular associations may be dissolved, and par- 
ticular schemes may be broken up ; and standard- 
bearers in the sacred cause may faint ; and the zeal 
of certain communities may fade : or political disas- 
ters may here and there bring ruin upon pious la- 
bors ; but unless devastation universal sweeps over 
the face of the civilized world, the doctrine of mission- 
ary zeal, which has been broad-cast over Christen- 
dom, in the present day, will not fail of coming to its 
harvest. And now, if there are any who wish ill to 
Christianity, let them hasten to prevent the measures 



254 PROBABLE SPREAD 

of its friends, let them teach their babes to hate the 
Gospel ; for those who love it are taking such means 
to insure its future triumph as can hardly fail of 
success, and such as, on common grounds of calcu- 
lation, make it likely that even the sons and the 
daughters of the present race of infidels may be 
involved in the approaching conquests of the Son of 
David ; and that they shall actually join in the loud 
hosanna, announcing his accession to the throne of 
universal empire. 

It is then more than barely probable — it is almost 
certain — that the attempt to offer Christianity to all 
nations, will not soon be abandoned. The next 
question is this — whether, on grounds of frigid 
calculation, such attempts are recommended by any 
fair promise of success. 

When the term calculation is used in reference 
to the diffusion of Christianity, a use of the word 
which perhaps may offend the ear of piety, an 
important distinction must be kept in view between 
that cordial admission of the Gospel which renovates 
the hearts of men individually, and that change of 
opinion and profession which may be brought about 
among a people by means that fall short of possess- 
ing efficiency to produce repentance and faith. And 
while the former must everywhere, at home or 
abroad, be the great object aimed at and desired by 
the Christian ministry, the latter is both in itself, 
even if nothing more were done, and as a pre- 
liminary, and a probable means conducing to the 
production of genuine piety, a most desirable and 



OP CHRISTIANITY. 255 

happy revolution. It is moreover a revolution which 
may be reckoned to lie within the range of human 
agency, when judiciously and perseveringly applied. 
For Christianity is a species of knowledge, in its 
nature communicable ; and, as a system of opinions, 
or as a code of morals, it possesses a manifest supe- 
riority, if fairly brought into comparison with any 
existing religious system. And if it may reasonably 
be asked concerning any people — how shall they 
believe without a preacher ? the converse question 
might, with little less confidence be put — how shall 
they not believe with one ? 

Pagan and Mohammedan nations ought to be 
thought of by a Christian people just as the master 
of*a numerous household, if he be wise and benevo- 
lent, thinks of the untutored members of his family ; 
for although no actual subjection is owned on the 
one side, or can be exercised on the other, there 
exists, virtually, the relationship and the responsi- 
bilities of that domination which is ever possessed 
by knowledge, intelligence, and virtue, over igno- 
rance and degradation. Now, as the master of a 
family may, to a greater or less extent, infallibly 
succeed by zeal, affection, skill, and patience, in dis- 
pelling the superstitions and the ignorance which 
have happened to come under his roof; so, with 
zeal, affection, skill, and patience, proportioned to 
the greatness of the work, may the Christian nations 
at length effect a cleansing of the earth from the 
cruelties and impurities of polytheism. 

Nothing inconsistent with the humblest and most 
devout dependence upon the divine agency is implied 



256 PROBABLE SPREAD 

in this supposition, any more than in the belief 
that our children and servants may be trained in the 
knowledge of God, and in the decencies of Christian 
worship. Is there not reason to think that an 
inattention to this plain principle has prevented, in 
some measure, the adoption of those vigorous and 
extended operations which common sense prescribes 
as the proper and probable means of diffusing at 
once civilization and religion through the world ? 

The probability of a change of religion on the 
part of an entire people may, it is true, be argued 
on the adverse, as well as on the favorable side, 
and with great appearance of reason. The obstinacy 
of the human mind in adhering to the worse, even 
when the better is presented to its choice, seems not 
seldom to possess the invincibility of a physical law ; 
and it has been found as impracticable to reform an 
absurd usage, as to remodel the national physiog- 
nomy. How often have both reason and despotism 
been baffled in their endeavors to effect even a 
trivial alteration in ancient usages or costumes ; and 
there has been room to suppose, that the tenacity of 
life belonging to customs or opinions, bears direct 
proportion always to their absurdity and their mis- 
chievous consequence. The high antiquity, and the 
still unbroken force of the Asiatic idolatries, in them- 
selves so hideous, so burdensome, and so sanguinary, 
stand forth as appalling confirmations of the truth, 
that whatever has once gained for itself the sanction 
of time, may boldly defy the assaults of reason. 
And then, when religious opinions and practices are 
in question, we have not merely to break through 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 257 

the iron law of immemorial usage, but to encounter 
the living opposition of the priesthood, already firmly 
seated in the cloud-girt throne of supposed super- 
natural power, and interested as deeply as men can 
be who have at stake their civil existence, and their 
credit, and their means of luxurious idleness. Again, 
in most instances, ancient religious opinions have 
sent down their roots through the solid structure of 
the civil institutions of the people : — the old super- 
stition is an oak that was sown by the builder of the 
state, and has actually pervaded the entire founda- 
tions, and forms now the living bond-timber, to 
remove which would be to bring to the ground the 
whole tottering masonry of the social system. 

When this side of the question has been long and 
exclusively contemplated, the schemes of missionary 
zeal may seem to be utterly chimerical ; or if not 
chimerical — dangerous. But the friends of mankind 
do not forget that the very same objects may be 
viewed in another light. Even before particular 
facts are appealed to, an hypothesis of an opposite 
kind may plausibly be advanced. It may be alleged 
that Opinion — the invisible power that rules the 
world — is a name without substance, which, though 
omnipotent so long as it is thought to be so, vanishes 
quicker than a mist, when once suspected to be 
impotent. It might also with great appearance of 
reason be affirmed as a universal law of the moral 
world, that the better, when fairly brought into col- 
lision with the worse, possesses an infallible certainty 
of ultimate prevalence. 

On this same principle, it is common to affirm, 



258 PROBABLE SPREAD 

that the improved mechanical processes of a scien- 
tific people will at length necessarily supplant the 
operose, and wasteful, and inefficient methods prac- 
tised by half-civilized nations. And thus probably 
will the ruinous and depopulating usages of despot- 
ism give way before the wealth-giving maxims of 
legal government. And thus also may it be hoped 
that a pure theology, and a pure morality, shall, if 
zealously diffused, prevail till they have removed all 
superstitions, with all their corruptions. Even on 
the lowest principles of natural theology, some such 
medicative power may be presumed to have been 
imparted to the human system, as a provision 
against the progress of utter moral dissolution. 

But while an argument of this sort is at issue, the 
simple method of appealing to such facts as may 
seem to bear conclusively upon the question, will 
assuredly not be neglected ; and it will be asked, 
whether there are on record any instances which 
give a peremptory negative to the assertion that a 
national change of religion ought to be thought of as 
an event in the last degree improbable. And why 
should not the spread and triumph of Christianity in 
the first ages of its promulgation be accepted as an 
instance absolutely conclusive, and in the fullest 
sense analogous to the problem that is to.be solved. 
To whatever causes that first prevalence of the 
religion of the Bible may be attributed, it is still an 
unquestioned fact that entire nations — not one or 
two, but many, and in every stage of advancement 
on the course of civilization — were actually brought 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 259 

to abandon their ancient superstitions, and to profess 
the Gospel. 

These amazing revolutions took place under 
almost every imaginable variety of circumstances, 
and they occupied a period of not more than three 
centuries, and the change had been wrought, to a 
great extent, before the aid of political succor came 
in ; and even in the front of political opposition. 
People after people fell away from their idolatries, 
and assumed (with how much or how little of cor- 
dial feeling matters not) the Christian name and 
code. 

Here once more the objector must be urged to 
select his alternative. — If it be granted that Chris- 
tianity won this w T ide success by aid from heaven, 
then who will profess to believe that a religion, so 
supported, shall not in the end vanquish mankind? 
Or if not, then manifestly, the fact of the spread of 
Christianity in the east, and in the west, in the 
north, and in the south, destroys altogether the sup- 
posed improbability of its again supplanting idolatry. 
It has been proved that nothing inseparable from 
human nature, nothing invincible, stands in the way 
of the diffusion of our faith among either polished or 
barbarous polytheists ; for already has it been vic- 
torious in both kinds. Let it be affirmed that the 
religious infatuations of mankind are firm as ada- 
mant ; still it is a fact that a hammer harder than 
adamant once shattered the rock to atoms. And 
now, when it is proposed again to smite the same 
substance with the same instrument, are those to be 
deemed irrational who anticipate the same success ? 



260 PROBABLE SPREAD 

In such an anticipation neither the superior purity 
and excellence of Christianity need be assumed, nor 
its truth : nothing is peremptorily affirmed but its 
well-attested efficiency to subvert and supplant other 
religious systems. A myriad of philosophists may 
clamorously affirm the missionary project to be 
insane. Nevertheless Christians, listening rather to 
the history of their religion than to the harangues of 
its modern oppugners, will go on to preach in every 
land, " That men should turn from dumb idols to 
serve the living God." 

That during a period of more than a thousand 
years Christianity should hardly have gained a foot 
of ground from polytheism, and should, in some 
quarters, have been driven in from its ancient 
frontiers, is only natural, seeing that, in the whole 
course of that time, no extended endeavors, or 
none guided and impelled by the genuine principles 
of the Gospel, were made to diffuse it. Angels have 
no commission to become evangelists ; and if men 
neglect their duty in this instance, no means remain 
for supplying their lack of service. The mod- 
ern missionary enterprises (exclusive of some very 
limited attempts) do not yet date fifty years ; and 
while the fact that this spirit of Christian zeal has 
maintained itself so long, attests its solidity, and 
gives a promise of its perpetuity, its recentness 
(recent compared with the work to be achieved) may 
justly be alleged in reply to those who ask — from 
whatever motive — Why are not the nations con- 
verted ? Within this short space of time the reli- 
gious public has had to be formed to a right feeling 



OP CHRISTIANITY. 261 

on the new subject; and all the practical wisdom 
that belongs to an enterprise so immense and so dif- 
ficult has had to be acquired ; and the agents of the 
work at home and abroad, to be trained ; and the 
initiatory obstacle — that occasioned by diversity of 
language — to be removed. The preparatives have 
now been passed through, and successes obtained, 
large and complete enough to quash all objection, 
and more than enough to recompense what they 
have cost. And these successes, moreover, warrant 
the belief that the universal prevalence of Chris- 
tianity (considered simply as an exterior profession) 
is suspended upon the continuance of the mis- 
sionary zeal among the Christians of Europe and 
America. 

Instead of allowing speculation to flit vaguely and 
ineptly over all the desolate places of the earth's 
surface, it will be better, if we would make our 
calculation definite, to fix upon a single region; 
and while we assume it as probable that the existing 
spirit of missionary vigilance and assiduity and 
self-devotion will continue in vigor during the en- 
suing half-century, endeavor roughly to estimate 
the chances (if the word may be used) of the en- 
trance and spread of Christian light in that one region ; 
and let us select the region which may be deemed 
altogether to occupy the place of an ultimate problem 
of evangelical enterprise. Thus announced, every 
one will of course think of China. 

Nothing is more difficult than to view, in the 
nakedness of mere truth, any object remote from 
personal observation, which has once filled the imag- 



262 PROBABLE SPREAD 

ination with images of vastness and mystery. Thus 
it often happens that benevolent schemes are robbed 
of their fair chance of success by the fond illusions 
which are suffered to swell out an empty bulk, so as 
to hide from view the real difficulties that ought to 
be deliberately met. And thus it is usual for the 
timid to amuse their inaction by contemplating 
spectral forms of danger or obstruction that exist 
only in the mind. Hindrances and impossibilities 
may even yield a sort of delight to the imagination, 
by the aspect of greatness and terror they assume ; 
at least while we resolve to view them only at a 
distance. And in such cases he must be singularly 
destitute of poetic feeling, or singularly conscientious 
and abstinent in the use of language, who, in de- 
scribing the proposed enterprise, does not impart to 
the mere facts a form and coloring of unreal great- 
ness and wonder. 

This sort of illusiveness and exaggeration un- 
questionably belongs to the subject of Christian 
missions to China. Who does not feel that the 
high numbers of its dense and far-spread population, 
amounting perhaps to more than a sixth part of the 
human family, and the yet unpenetrated veil of 
mystery which hangs over the origin of the people, 
and over their actual condition, and even over the 
geography of the country ; and then the singularity 
of the national character, and the anomalous con- 
struction of the language, altogether raise a mist of 
obscurity which rests in the way of the inquirer 
who asks — Is the attempt to introduce Christianity 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 263 

among these millions of our brethren utterly vain 
and visionary? 

The natural exaggerations which infest this sub- 
ject have indeed been sensibly reduced within the 
last few years : twenty years ago cautious and 
sagacious Protestants would have thought them- 
selves bound., in deference to common sense, to de- 
ride the idea of converting China to the faith of 
Europe. What the De propaganda, with its store 
of accommodating measures might attempt, none 
who must adhere to the guileless methods of Chris- 
tian instruction would undertake : or even if an en- 
terprise of this sort were commenced, it must be 
allowed a date of five hundred years for achieving 
any considerable success ! But better information, 
and the actual accomplishment of the initiatory pro- 
cess, must now, by the least sanguine minds, be 
deemed greatly to have lessened the improbabilities 
of such an attempt, and to have shortened the date 
of our Christian hopes. What has been accomplished 
of late by the assiduity, and the intellectual vigor, 
and the moral intrepidity of a few individuals, has 
turned the beam of calculation ; and it is now ra- 
tional to talk of that which, very recently, might 
not have been named, except among visionaries. 

The brazen gate of China, sculptured with in- 
scrutable characters, and bolted and barred, as it 
seemed, against western ingenuity — the gate of its 
anomalous language, has actually been set wide open; 
and although the ribbon of despotic interdiction is 
still stretched across the highway that leads to the 
popular mind, access, to some extent, has been 



264 PROBABLE SPREAD 

obtained ; and who shall affirm that this frail barrier 
insurmountable as it may now seem, shall at all 
times, during another fifty years, exist, and be 
respected ? Within even a much shorter term, is 
it not probable, that revolutions of dynasty, or 
popular commotions, may suspend or divert, for a 
moment, the vigilance of jealous ignorance ? In 
some such manner it may be supposed that, the 
means of diffusing religious knowledge being, as 
they are, accumulated, and headed up above the 
level of the plains of China, the dam bursting, or 
falling into decay, the healing flood of Christian 
truth shall suffuse itself in all directions over the 
vast surface. 

But we are told that the national intellect is spell- 
bound in a condition of irremediable imbecility. 
The people, it is said, have no ideas but such as are 
fixed under the petrifactions of their ancient usages ; 
or even if they had a mind in which ideas might 
float, they have no medium of communication, or 
none which can take up even an atom of knowledge 
or of sentiment that is of foreign growth. How 
then shall such a people be converted to Chris- 
tianity ? Were it not as well to attempt to inform 
and persuade the sculptures of Elephanta, or the 
glazed images of their own pottery ? To all this 
show of impossibility, a full and sufficient reply is 
contained in a single affirmation of Scripture, not 
less philosophically just than it is beautiful and 
sublime — " The Lord looketh from heaven, he be- 
holdeth all the sons of men : from the place of his 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 265 

habitation he looketh upon all the inhabitants of the 
earth : he fashioneth their hearts alike." 

The old doctrine that there are certain generic 
and invincible inferiorities of intellect which must 
forever bar the advancement of some branches of 
the human family, has of late received so signal a 
refutation in the instance of the African race — long 
and pertinaciously consigned by interested philoso- 
phers to perpetual degradation — that it now hardly 
needs to be argued against. And assuredly, if the 
negro cranium is found, spite of phrenologists, to 
admit of mathematical abstraction, fine taste, and 
fine feeling, it will not be affirmed that the skull of 
the Tartar or Chinese must necessarily exclude sim- 
ilar excellences. To assert, either that nature has 
conferred no physical superiorities, favorable to the 
development of mind, on particular races, or to 
maintain that the comparative disadvantages of some 
nations are so great and unalterable as to constitute 
impassable barriers in the way of civilization, is 
equally a quackery which history and existing facts 
condemn, and which nothing but the love of theory 
or simplification could ever recommend to an intel- 
ligent observer of mankind. With the uniform 
evidence of history before us, it may well be assumed 
as probable that certain races will always retain the 
intellectual pre-eminence they have acquired ; nor 
is it at all less reasonable to suppose that every tribe, 
even the most degraded, is intrinsically capable of 
whatever is essential to a state of social order and 
moral dignity. 

If the lowest degree of proficiency in the mechan- 
12 



266 PROBABLE SPREAD 

ical arts is justly held to give proof of the existence 
of those powers of abstraction whence, with proper 
culture, the sciences may take their rise, so, with 
equal certainty, may we infer a susceptibility of the 
religious emotions from even the feeblest indications 
of the moral sense. When a people diffused over so 
extensive a surface, and so thickly covering that 
surface, is seen to submit itself intelligently to the 
patriarchal form of government, which implies the 
constant and powerful influence of a moral abstrac- 
tion, and a vivid sense of unseen power, no doubt 
can remain of its capacity to admit the motives of 
Christian faith. 

The Chinese are what they are, more from the 
natural consequence of having sustained, during 
many successive generations, what may be termed 
national imprisonment, than from the operation of 
any physical disabilities. So complete and success- 
ful an interdiction of intercourse with strangers has 
not been known to take place in any other country ; 
and a closer fitting of the restraints of custom and 
etiquette upon the manners than has elsewhere been 
effected, has not failed to impart to the national char- 
acter that peculiar gait—\{ the phrase maybe used — 
which must distinguish one who had been released 
from his swaddling-bands only to be encumbered 
with a chain, and had worn that chain through life. 
Of the Chinese people it may truly be said that " the 
iron hath entered into their soul." 

But even without resting upon the probability of 
the subversion of the existing despotism, the defeat 
of its jealous precautions may be anticipated as 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 267 

what must at length result from the present course 
of events. That portion of the Chinese population 
which may be termed the extra-mural, and which, 
in numbers, exceeds some European nations, may 
be considered as the depository of the happy desti- 
nies of the empire ; for these expatriate millions are 
accessible to instruction ; and if once they become, 
to any considerable extent, alive to religious truth, 
no prohibitions of paternal despotism will avail to 
exclude the new principles from the mother country. 
It is a false feeling that would draw discouragement 
from the comparative diminutiveness and small ac- 
tual results of the operations that are carrying on 
for imparting Christianity to this people. These 
measures ought, in philosophical justice, to be viewed 
as the commencements of an accelerative movement, 
acting incessantly upon an inert mass, which, by the 
very laws of nature, must at length receive impulse 
enough to be carried forward in the course of the 
propelling cause. To be assured of this result, all 
that we need is to be assured of the continuance of 
the spring of movement. 

If the several spheres of missionary labor are 
reviewed, none, it is presumed, can be deemed to 
offer more serious obstacles than the one already 
referred to ; or if there be one such, yet have fact 
and experiment already given a full reply to all 
objections. May it be permitted to say that a voice 
from heaven, full of meaning, is heard in the partic- 
ular character of the successes, how limited soever 
they may be, which have crowned the incipient 
attempts to convert the heathen ? The veriest rep 



268 PROBABLE SPREAD 

robates of civilization and social order have been the 
first to be brought in to grace the triumphs of the 
Gospel in its recent attempts at foreign conquest ; 
as if at once to solve all doubts, and to refute all 
cavils, relating to the practicability and promise of 
the enterprise. If it had been thought or affirmed 
that the stupefaction and induration of heart pro- 
duced upon a race by ages of uncorrected ferocity 
and sensuality must repel forever the attempts of 
Christian zeal, it is shown, in the instance of the 
extremest specimens that could have been selected, 
that a few years only of beneficent skill and patience 
are enough to transform the fierce and voluptuous 
savage into a being of pure, and gentle, and noble 
sentiments ; that within a few years all the domestic 
virtues, and even the public virtues, graced with the 
decencies of rising industry, may occupy the very 
spots that were reeking with human blood, and with 
the filthiness of every abomination which the sun 
blushes to behold. 

If one islet only of the Southern Ocean had cast 
away its idols and its horrific customs, if one hamlet 
only of the Negro or Hottentot race had become 
Christian, there would have been no more place left 
on which the objector against missions could rest his 
cavils ; for the problem of the conversion of the 
heathen would have been satisfactorily solved. But 
in truth, these happy and amazing revolutions have 
taken place with such frequency, and under so great 
a diversity of circumstance, and in front of so many 
obstacles, that instead of asking whether barbarous 
nations may be persuaded to forsake their cruel 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 269 

delusions, it may with more propriety be asked — if 
anything can prevent the progress of such reforms, 
universally, where Christian zeal and wisdom perse- 
veringly perform their part. 

The relative political and commercial condition 
of nations at the present moment, affords several 
special grounds of reasoning, on which the extention 
of Christianity may be anticipated as a probable 
event. Among topics of this class may be named 
that of the diffusion of the English language — the 
language which beyond comparison with any other 
is spreading and running through all the earth, and 
which, by the commerce and enterprise of two inde- 
pendent and powerful states, is colonizing the shores 
of every sea ; this language, now pouring itself over 
all the waste places of the earth, is the principal 
medium of Christian truth and feeling, and is rich 
in every means of Christian instruction, and is 
fraught with religious sentiment, in all kinds, adapted 
to the taste of the philosopher, the cottager, and the 
infant. Almost apart, therefore, from missionary 
labor, the spread of this language insures the 
spread of the religion of the Bible. The doctrine 
is entwined with the language, and can hardly be 
disjoined. If the two expansive principles of colo- 
nization and commercial enterprise, once diffused the 
language and religion of Greece completely around 
every sea known to ancient navigation, it is now 
much more probable that the same principles of dif- 
fusion will carry English institutions, and English 
opinions, into every climate. 



270 PROBABLE SPREAD 

But in calculations or speculations of this sort, 
merely secular as they are, much less is included 
than truly belongs to the question at issue. Not to 
assume the truth of Christianity, and not to argue 
on the ground of its divine excellence, and not to 
confide in those prospective declarations, the cer- 
tainty of which has been attested beyond possibility 
of doubt, is not only to grope in the dark when we 
might walk in the light of noon, but to exclude from 
the working of our problem the very facts of most 
significance in its determination. To estimate fairly 
the probability of the universal triumph of true re- 
ligion, a second method must be pursued, in which 
the existing condition of the Christian church is to 
be contemplated with a Christian feeling. When 
thus viewed it will appear that a promise of a new 
kind is now bursting from the bud ; and the infer- 
ence may confidently be drawn that " summer is 
nigh." 

For the purpose of measuring the progress of re- 
ligion, attempts have sometimes been made to effect 
a sort of Christian statistics, or calculation of the 
actual number of true believers throughout the 
world. But the propriety of such an application of 
arithmetic is far from being conspicuous ; and seeing 
that the subject of computation lies confessedly be- 
neath the reach of the human eye, its accuracy may 
be absolutely denied. Endeavors, again, have been 
made to judge of the advance or decline of religion 
by comparing the state of devotional feeling and of 
morals in the present and in other times. But all 
such comparisons must be deemed, at the best, ex- 



OP CHRISTIANITY. 271 

tremely vague, and open to immense errors, arising 
either from the prepossessions of the individual who 
makes the comparison, or from the want of data 
sufficiently ample and exact ; and probably from 
both. 

No attempts of this delusive kind will here be 
offered to the reader ; but instead of them, certain 
unquestionable and obvious facts will be assumed 
as affording reasonable ground of very exhilarating 
hopes. 

If any one were required, without premeditation, 
to give a reply to the question — What is the most 
prominent circumstance in the present state of the 
Christian Church ? he would, if sufficiently informed 
on the subject, almost certainly answer — The honor 
done to the Scriptures. Such an answer may be 
supposed as suggested by the conspicuousness of the 
fact. Now in order to gather our inference safely 
from this fact, it is necessary to look back for a 
moment to past times. 

In the first aud best age of the church, the defer- 
ence paid to the inspired writings, whether of pro- 
phets or apostles, was as great as can be imagined to 
exist : and whatever of beneficial influence belongs to 
the Sacred Volume, was then actually in operation ; 
or it was so with a single drawback, namely — that 
arising from the scarcity of the book, and its non- 
existence in the hands of the Christian commonalty. 
To estimate duly the greatness of this disadvantage, 
let it be imagined what would be the effect, among 
ourselves, of a sudden withdrawment of almost all 
but the church copies of the Scriptures. This sup- 



272 



PROBABLE SPREAD 



position need not be enlarged upon, for every devo- 
tional Christian, and every master of a family feels 
that, in whatever way the loss might be attempted to 
be supplied, it would still be afflicting and injurious 
in the extremest degree. 

In the next, and the declining period of church 
history, if the above-named disadvantage was in 
some small degree remedied by the multiplication of 
copies, the benefit was much more than overbal- 
anced by the promulgation and general prevalence 
of a false and very pernicious system of exposition ; 
a system which sheathed the " sword of the Spirit," 
and scarcely left it its power o' penetrating the con- 
science. The immediate co 1 equence of this abuse 
of the rule of faith and practi je was the rapid growth 
of a thousand corruptions. Thus, while in lip and 
in ceremonial the Scriptures held their seat of 
authority, they were dislodged from the throne of 
power. A night of a thousand years succeeded, 
during which the witnesses of God lay in their tomb, 
literally and virtually hidden, and silenced, and de- 
graded. 

The Reformation was, in all senses, a resurrection 
of the Bible : it was its recovery and restoration as 
an ancient document ; and the recognition of its 
authority as the word of God ; and the discovery of 
its meaning as a rule of faith, and worship, and life ; 
and its new diffusion through the Christian body. 
The restoration of the Scriptures to their place of 
power and honor brought with it a revival of true 
piety, scarcely, if at all, inferior in extent and fer- 
vency to that which attended the preaching of the 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 273 

apostles. There were, however, deductions from the 
full influence and permanent benefit that might have 
resulted from this recovery of the sacred canon. Of 
these deductions, the first was the limited and imper- 
fect diffusion of copies ; for though the publication 
of the Bible by means of the press was actually 
great, it fell very far short of being complete. The 
next deduction arose from the infant state of the 
science of biblical criticism ; the next, from the still 
unbroken influence of scholastic systems and modes 
of expression, which spread a dense coloring medium 
over the lucidness of the apostolic style ; the next, 
and the most considerable and pernicious of these 
drawbacks, arose from the acrimony of controversy, 
and from that spirit of contumacious scrupulosity 
which is the parent of schism. These imperfections 
were great enough to bar the progress of Christian- 
ity, and to sully its glory at the time, and to procure 
the speedy decline of piety in all the Protestant 
countries. 

But when the present aspect of the church is 
compared with its condition at the era of the Refor- 
mation, several circumstances connected with the 
state of the Scriptures offer themselves to observa- 
tion, that are decidedly in favor of our times ; and 
such as seem pregnant with hope for the future. 
Of these, the first is the unexampled muliplication 
and diffusion of the sacred volume : the second, is 
the progress that has been made towards bringing 
the original text to a state of undisputed purity ; as 
well as the advancement of the science of biblical 
criticism, by which means the verbal meaning of the 

12* 



274 PROBABLE SPREAD 

inspired writers is now ascertained more satisfactori- 
ly than at any time since the apostolic age : and the 
third, is the incipient adoption of an improved 
method of exposition; attended by an increasing 
disposition to bow to the Bible, as the only arbiter 
in matters of religion. It remains, then, briefly to 
point out in what manner these auspicious circum- 
stances support the hope of an approaching revival 
of genuine religion. 

For the first of them, namely, the multiplication 
and diffusion of the sacred volume : 

Whenever the true and the false in matters of 
religion are brought into conflict, two things are 
necessary to secure the triumph of the better side, 
namely, in the first place, that the sound opinion 
should be set forth in a perspicuous and convincing 
manner ; and then, that it should be borne forwards 
over the resistances of antiquated prejudice, and 
worldly interest, and secular power, by the mo- 
mentum of public feeling. It is not the single 
preaching even of an archangel, that could effect the 
renovation of the church when it really needs to be 
brought back to purity and health. All the logic of 
heaven would die unheeded on the ear, unless it 
were re-echoed from the multitude. Now if it may 
for a moment be assumed that a general rectification 
of doctrine and practice, and a revival of primitive 
piety is actually about to take place, what is that 
preliminary measure which might be anticipated as 
the necessary means of giving irresistible force, and 
universal spread to such a reformation ? What but 
the placing of the sacred canon, the arbiter of all 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 275 

dispute, and the fountain of all motives, previously 
in the hands of the people oi every country ? If, in 
the coming era, the teachers of religion are to insist 
upon its doctrines and duties with new force and 
clearness, their success must be expected to bear 
proportion to the existence of scriptural knowledge, 
or to the means of acquiring it, among those whom 
they address. 

An extraordinary excitement of religious feeling, 
arising previously to the general circulation of the 
Scriptures, can hardly be imagined to take so pros- 
perous and safe a course, as it would, if it followed 
that circulation. So far as a conjecture on the 
methods of divine procedure may be hazarded, it 
must be believed that the extensive dissemination of 
the Scriptures, which has of late been carrying on, 
and which is still in active progress, in all those 
parts of the world that are accessible to Christian 
zeal, is a precursive measure, soon to be followed by 
that happy revolution of which it gives so intelligible 
an augury. 

Let it be said, and perhaps it may be said with 
some truth, that the actual religious impression 
hitherto produced by the copious issuing of Bibles 
among the common people in our own and other 
countries, is less remarkable than might have been 
anticipated ; then, with so much the more confi- 
dence may the belief be entertained that this ex- 
traordinary publication of the will of God to man is, 
on the part of him who overrules all events for the 
furtherance of his gracious designs, altogether a 
prospective measure; and that the special intention 



276 PROBABLE SPREAD 

of these many translations, and of these countless 
reprints of the Bible is yet to be developed. 

Is there much of gratuitous assumption, or of 
unwarrantable speculation in picturing the present 
position of mankind in some such manner as the 
following ? — During a long course of ages a contro- 
versy, managed with various success, has been 
carried on here and there in the world, on the great 
questions of immortality, and of the liability of man 
to future punishment, as the transgressor of the 
divine law ; and concerning the terms of re- 
conciliation. Hitherto, there has stood, on the 
affirmative, or religious side of this controversy, 
only a small and scattered party ; while on the other 
side, there has remained, with more or less of active 
hostility, the great majority of mankind, who have 
chosen to pursue the interests of the present life, as 
if no doctrine of immortality had been credibly 
announced ; and who have dared the future displeas- 
ure of the Most High ; and have ventured the loss 
of endlesss happiness ; and have spurned the con- 
ditions of pardon. But it is imagined that now, 
events of a new order are to bring this momentous 
controversy to a final crisis. Yet before the moment 
of awful decision comes on, and while all minds 
remain in the listlessness of the ancient apathy, and 
while the winds of high commotion lie hushed in the 
caverns of divine restraint — in this season of por- 
tentous tranquillity, those writings, upon the author- 
ity of which the issue is to turn, are put into every 
hand ; and although the hands that receive them, 
seem now to hold the book with a careless grasp, 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 277 

ere long an alarm shall be sounded through all 
nations ; and all shall be roused from their spiritual 
sleep, and shall awake to feel that the interests of an 
endless life are in suspense : then shall it appear for 
what purpose the Bible has first been delivered to 
every people ! 

These views, it is granted, are in part conjectural , 
and yet, who that entertains a belief of the provi- 
dential guidance of the Christian church, can sup- 
pose that the most remarkable course of events that 
has hitherto ever marked the history of the Script- 
ures, is not charged with the accomplishment of 
some unusual revolution ? and what revolution less 
than the installment of the inspired volume in the 
throne of universal authority, can be thought of, as 
the probable result of the work that is now carrying 
forwards ? If the prejudices of the sceptical spirit, 
which, in some degree, blind even the most devout, 
were removed, every eye, accustomed to penetrate 
futurity, would see, in the recent diffusion of the 
Sacred Writings, an indubitable sign of their ap- 
proaching triumph over all forms of impiety and 
false religion. 

The friends of Bible Societies might, on this 
ground, find a motive for activity that would be 
proof against all discouragement. When missionary 
efforts meet disappointment, and when accomplished 
teachers are removed in quick succession by death, 
and when stations where much toil has been ex- 
pended are abandoned, and when converts fall away 
from their profession, the whole fruit of zeal 
perishes : but it is otherwise in the work of trans- 



278 PROBABLE SPREAD 

lating and of multiplying the Scriptures ; for al- 
though these endeavors should at first be rejected 
by those for whose benefit they are designed ; still, 
what has been done is not lost ; the seed sown may 
spring up, even after a century of winter. Even if 
the existing Bible Societies, at home and abroad, 
should do nothing more than accomplish the initiative 
labors of translation, and should spend their rev- 
enues in filling their warehouses with an unde- 
manded stock of Bibles, they would almost insure 
the universal diffusion of true religion in the ensuing 
age. Immediate success is doubtless to be coveted ; 
but though this should be withheld, the work of 
translation and of printing is pregnant with an in- 
fallible promise. 

The restoration of the Sacred Text to a state of 
almost undisputed purity, the accumulation of the 
resources of biblical criticism, and the great ad- 
vances that have been made in the business of 
ascertaining the grammatical sense of the inspired 
writers, are circumstances in a very high degree 
conducive to the expected prevalence of genuine 
religion. Both infidelity and heresy have, till of 
late, found harborage in the supposed, or pretended, 
corruption, or uncertainty of the canon. And the 
whole of those small successes, which have served, 
from time to time, to keep alive the flickering hopes 
of heterodoxy, have been drawn from the detection 
of petty faults in the received text. There was a 
season when some, even of the champions of ortho- 
doxy, became infected with unwarrantable fears and 
suspicions on this ground. But the utmost depth of 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 279 

the elxog has been probed. The most sanguine 
sceptic can henceforward hardly hope to derive any 
new or important advantages from this source. The 
text of the Scriptures is now in a state more satis- 
factory than that of any other ancient writings ; and 
though ignorance may go on to prate as it is wont, 
no theologian, who would not forfeit his reputation 
as a scholar, dares to insist upon objections which 
some years ago were thought to be of the most for- 
midable kind. 

It is remarkable that this work of purgation and 
restoration, which, like that of the translation and 
diffusion of the Scriptures, is manifestly of a pre- 
liminary kind, should have been completed at this 
precise moment. Had these doubts and suspicions 
remained unexamined and unsettled, they might 
greatly have checked the progress of a future relig- 
ious revival : they might have given birth to new 
heresies, vigorous from the enhanced tone of general 
feeling ; they might have shaken the minds of the 
faithful, and have distracted the attention of the 
ministers of religion. But this preparatory work is 
done ; and so fully have the holds of sceptical doc- 
trine been searched into, and so thoroughly has the 
invalidity of its pleas been exposed, that nothing is 
now wanted but an energetic movement of the 
public mind to shake off forever all its withering 
sophisms. 

It is not as if even the most faulty translation of 
the Scriptures ; or one made from the most defective 
text, would not abundantly convey all necessary 
religious truth ; or, as if Christian doctrine and 



280 PROBABLE SPREAD 

practice were, to any great extent, dependent upon 
philological exactitude of any kind. But in removing 
occasions for the cavils and insinuations of captious 
or timid spirits, the literary restoration of the Bible, 
and the abundant means of ascertaining the gram- 
matical sense of its phrases, is highly important. 
And in looking towards the future, it must be 
regarded as a circumstance of peculiar significance 
that the documents of our faith have just passed 
through the severest possible ordeal of hostile criti- 
cism at the very moment when they are in course of 
delivery to all nations. 

The recent progress made towards the adoption 
of an improved method of exposition demands to be 
named amongst the most auspicious indications of 
the present times. Insensibly, and undesignedly, 
and from the operation of various causes, all well- 
intentioned theologians have of late been fast ad- 
vancing towards that simple and rational method of 
inferring the doctrine of Scripture which corres- 
ponds with the inductive method of inquiry, practiced 
in the pursuit of physical science. Just as, in the 
ancient schools of philosophy, each pretended ex- 
pounder of the mysteries of nature, first framed his 
theory, and then imposed upon all phenomena such 
an interpretation as would best accord with his hy- 
pothesis ; so have biblical expositors, in long succes- 
sion, from the ancient Jewish doctors, to the Chris- 
tian divines of the last century, with very few, if 
any exceptions, followed the method of interpreting 
each separate portion of Scripture by the aid of a 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 281 

previously formed theological hypothesis. And al- 
though these theories of divinity may have been, 
perhaps, fairly founded upon scriptural evidence, 
partially obtained, they have often exerted an in- 
fluence scarcely less pernicious than as if they had 
been altogether erroneous. This system once ad- 
mitted to constitute a synopsis of truth, has been suf- 
fered to exercise the most arrogant domination over 
every part of Scripture in detail. Certain dogmas, 
awfully clothed in the clouds of metaphysical phrase- 
ology, have bid defiance to the most explicit evidence 
of an opposite meaning ; and no text has been per- 
mitted to utter its testimony, until it had been placed 
on the rack. 

But the folly and impiety of this style of inter- 
pretation have become conspicuous ; and though not 
yet quite abandoned, it is left to those whose minds 
have been too long habituated to trammels to move 
at all without them. The rule of the new mode of 
exposition is founded on a principle precisely anal- 
ogous to that which forms the basis of the inductive 
method of inquiry in physical science. In these 
sciences it is now universally admitted, that, at the 
best, and after all possible diligence and sagacity 
have been employed, w 7 e can scarcely penetrate 
beyond the exterior movements of the material 
system ; while the interior mechanism of nature still 
defies human scrutiny. Nothing then could be more 
preposterous than to commence the study of nature 
by laying down, theoretically, the plan of those 
hidden and central contrivances, as if they were 
open to observation ; and then to work outwards 



282 PROBABLE SPREAD 

from that centre, and to explain all facts that come 
under observation in conformity with principles so 
ignorantly assumed. This is indeed to take a lie 
in our right hand, as the key of knowledge : yet 
such was the philosophy which ruled the world for 
ages ! 

The method of hypothetical interpretation is, if 
possible, more absurd in theology than in natural 
science. Every mind not infatuated by intellectual 
vanity, must admit, that it is only some few neces- 
sary points of knowledge, relating to the constitution 
and movements of the infinite and spiritual world, 
that can be made the matter of revelation to man- 
kind ; and these must be offered in detached por- 
tions, apart from their symmetry. Meanwhile the 
vast interior, the immeasurable whole, is not merely 
concealed, but is in itself strictly incomprehensible 
by human faculties. Metaphysical projections of 
the moral system, how neat soever, and entire, and 
plausible they may seem, can have no place in what 
deserves to be called a rational theology. We not 
only do not know, but we could not learn, the very 
things which the framer of a " scientific divinity" 
professes to spread forth in all their due proportions 
on his chart of the upper world. 

The mode in which the necessarily incomplete 
revelation of that upper world is conveyed in the 
Scriptures, is in harmony with that in which the 
phenomena of nature offer themselves to our notice. 
The sum or amount of divine knowledge really 
intended to be conveyed to us, has been broken up 
and scattered over a various surface ; it has been 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 283 

half-hidden, and half-displayed ; it has been couched 
beneath hasty and incidental allusions ; it has been 
doled out in morsels and in atoms. There are 
no logical synopses in the Bible ; there are no sci- 
entific presentations of the body of divinity ; no 
comprehensive digests ; for such would have been 
not only unsuited to popular taste and comprehen- 
sion, but actually impracticable ; since they must 
have contained that which neither the mind of man 
can receive, nor his language embody. Better far 
might a seraph attempt to convey the largeness of 
his celestial ideas to a child, than God impart a 
systematic revelation to man. On the contrary, 
it is almost as if the vessel of divine philosophy had 
been wrecked and broken in a distant storm ; and as 
if the fragments only had come drifting upon our 
world, which, like an islet in the ocean of eternity, 
has drawn to itself what might be floating near its 
shores. 

The abrupt and illogical style of oriental com- 
position, and in some instances, the characteristic 
simplicity of untutored minds, are to be regarded as 
the appropriate means chosen for imparting to man- 
kind such loose particles of religious truth as it was 
necessary for them to receive. This inartificial 
vehicle was, of all others, the one best adapted to the 
conveyance of a revelation, necessarily imperfect 
and partial. 

Now it is manifest that the mode of exposition 
must be conformed to the style of the document ; and 
this conformity demands that the inductive method, 
invariably, should be used for gleaning the sense of 



284 PROBABLE SPREAD 

Scripture. While employing all the well-known 
means proper for ascertaining the grammatical sense 
of ancient writers, each single passage of the Inspired 
Volume, like a single phenomenon of nature, is tc 
be interrogated for its evidence, without any soli- 
citude for the fate of a preconceived theory, and 
without asking — How is this evidence to be recon- 
ciled with that derived from other quarters? — for it 
is remembered that the revelation we are studying is 
a partial discovery of facts, which could not be more 
than imperfectly made known. Whoever has not 
yet fully satisfied himself that the Scriptures, 
throughout, were "given by inspiration of God," 
should lose no time in determining that doubt : but 
if it be determined, then it is a flagrant incon- 
sistency not to confide in the principle that the Bible 
is everywhere truly consistent with itself, whether 
or not we have the means of tracing its agreements. 
And while this principle is adhered to, no sentiment 
or fact plainly contained in the words, need be re- 
fused or contorted on account of its apparent incon- 
gruity with " systematic divinity." 

In this manner only is it possible that the whole 
amount of religious knowledge intended to be im- 
parted by the Scriptures can be gathered from them. 
It must be granted as not only probable, but certain, 
that whatever relates to infinity, to the Divine nature, 
;.o the ultimate purposes of the Divine government, 
to the unseen worlds, and to the future state, and 
even to the mechanism of motives, must offer itself 
to the human understanding in a form beset with 
difficulties. That this must actually be the case 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 285 

might be demonstrated with mathematical certainty. 
If therefore we resolve to receive from the Inspired 
Writers nothing but what we can reconcile, first to 
certain abstruse notions, and then to a particular in- 
terpretation of other passages, the consequence is 
inevitable — that we obtain a theology, needlessly 
limited, if not erroneous. 

It may fairly be supposed that there are treasures 
of divine knowledge yet latent beneath the surface 
of the Scriptures, which the practice of scholastic 
exposition, so long adhered to, on all sides, has 
locked up from the use of the Church ; and it may 
be hoped, that when that method has fallen com- 
pletely mto disuse, and when the simple and humble 
style of inductive interpretation is better under- 
stood, and is more constantly resorted to than at 
present, and when the necessary imperfection and 
incoherency of all human knowledge of divine things 
is fully recognized, and when the vain attempt to 
fashion a miniature model of the spiritual universe 
is for ever abandoned, and when whatever the In- 
spired Writers either explicitly affirm, or obscurely 
intimate, is embraced in simplicity of heart, that 
then the boundaries of our prospect of the hidden 
and the future world may be vastly enlarged. Nor 
is this all ; for in the same manner the occasions of 
controversy will be almost entirely removed ; and 
though small differences of opinion may remain, 
it will be seen by all to be flagrantly absurd to 
assume such inconsiderable diversities as the pre- 
texts of dissention and separation. 

No one cordially reverencing the Bible, and be- 



286 PROBABLE SPREAD 

lieving it to be given by inspiration of God, who is 
** not the author of confusion, but of order," can 
imagine it to have been so worded and constructed 
as to necessitate important diversities of interpreta- 
tion among those who humbly and diligently labor 
to obtain its meaning. Nor will any but bigots 
deny that, with those who differ from themselves, 
there may be found diligence and sincerity quite 
equal to their own. What account then is to be 
given of those contrarieties of opinion which con- 
tinue to sully the glory of the Christian Church, 
and to deprive it almost entirely of its expansive 
energy ? 

In endeavouring to give a satisfactory reply to 
this important question, we are, of course, entitled 
to cfimiss from the discussion, first, those errors of 
doctrine which spring immediately from the pre- 
possessions of proud and unholy minds, and which 
are not to be refuted until such evil dispositions are 
rectified. It is not a better exposition of Scripture, 
merely, that will afford an efficient remedy for such 
false opinions. In the next place it is proper to 
put out of the question all those politico-religious 
divisions which, as they originated in accident, so 
now rest for their maintenance much less upon 
reason, than upon the authority of habit, and the 
pertinacity of party feeling, or perhaps even upon 
motives of secular interest. All such causes ol 
schism must be scattered to the winds whenever the 
authoritative force of the divine injunctions to 
peace and union, and mutual forbearance, is vividly 
felt. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 287 

There should moreover be dismissed from the 
question those differences that have arisen in the 
Church on some special points of antiquarian ob- 
scurity. These having been in a past age absurdly 
lifted into importance by an exaggerated notion of 
the right and duty of Christians to stickle upon their 
individual opinions, even at the cost of the great 
law of love, are now pretty generally felt by men of 
right feeling, to be heir-looms of shame and dis- 
advantage to whoever holds them. A very probable 
return to good sense and piety is all that is needed 
to get rid for ever of such disputes. If the utmost 
endeavors of competent and honest men, on both 
sides, haven ot availed to put certain questions of 
ancient usage beyond doubt ; then it is manifest that 
such points do not belong to the fundamentals of 
faith or practice ; and therefore can never afford 
ground of justifiable separation ; nor should the 
Christian commonalty be encouraged to suppose that 
the solemnities of conscience are implicated in the 
decision of questions which, even the most learned 
cannot in fact decide. What less than a grievous 
injury to right feelings can ensue from the popular 
belief that the manifold evils of religious dissension 
are mischiefs of small moment, compared with the 
breach of some niceties of ceremonial ? Shall Chris- 
tianity spread in the world, and show itself glorious, 
while practical absurdities like these are persisted 
in ? assuredly not. But there is reason to believe, 
even in spite of the fixedness of some unsocial spirits, 
that the date of schism is nearly expired, and that 
a better understanding of the great law of Christ 



288 PROBABLE SPREAD 

will ere long bring all his true followers into the 
same fold. 

When the deductions named above have been 
made, the remaining differences that exist among 
the pious are such only as may fairly be attributed 
to the influence of the old theoretic system of inter- 
pretation ; and they are such as must presently dis- 
appear when the rule of inductive exposition shall 
be thoroughly understood and generally practised. 
The hope therefore of an approaching prosperous 
era in the Church depends, in great measure, upon 
the probability of a cordial return to the authority 
of Scripture — of Scripture unshackled by hypothe- 
sis. It is this return alone that can remove the 
misunderstandings which have parted the body of 
Christ ; and it is the reunion of the faithful that must 
usher in better times. 

That a torn church should be eminently prosper- 
ous, that it should be favored as the instrument of 
diffusing the Gospel with triumphant success, and 
on a large scale, among the nations, cannot be 
imagined ; for doubtless the Head of the church 
holds the most emphatic of his admonitions in higher 
esteem than that he should easily brook the breach 
and contempt of it, and put extraordinary honor 
upon those who seem to love their particular opinions 
more than they do " his commandment." 

Even without laying any great stress upon that 
softening of party prejudices which has of late 
actually taken place, the hope of a near termination 
of controversy, and of the healing of all permanent 
differences among true Christians, may still rest on 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 289 

solid ground. An intelligent faith in the divine 
origination of the Scriptures contains necessarily a 
belief in their power to bring the catholic church 
into a state of unity, so that division should no more 
be thought of. That, during so many ages this has 
not been the condition of the Christian body, is 
satisfactorily to be attributed to causes which are by 
no means of inevitable perpetuity; but, which on 
the contrary, seem now to be approaching their last 
stage of feeble existence. Meanwhile the Oracles 
of God are visibly ascending to the zenith of their 
rightful power. The necessary preparations for their 
instalment in the place of undisputed authority are 
completed ; and nothing is waited for but a move- 
ment of general feeling, to give them such influence 
as shall bear down whatever now obstructs the uni- 
versal communion of the faithful. 

An expectation of this sort will, of course, be 
spurned by those (if there are any such) who, were 
they deprived of their darling sectarism, and robbed 
of their sinister preferences, would scarcely care at 
all for Christianity, and to whom the idea of Catholic 
Christianity, if they can. admit such an idea, is a 
cold abstraction. And it will be rejected also by 
those who, though their feelings are Christian, 
accustom themselves to look at the state of religion 
always with a secular eye, and are indisposed to 
admit any suppositions not obtruded upon them by 
immediate matters of fact. To all such persons the 
existing obstacles that stand in the way of Church 
union must seem utterly insurmountable, and the 
hope of an annihilation of party distinctions, alto- 
13 



290 PROBABLE SPREAD 

gether chimerical. But it is not to such minds that 
the appeal is to be made when futurity is in ques- 
tion ; for such are always slaves of the past, and of 
the present ; and they are destined to stand by, and 
wonder, and cavil, while happy revolutions are in 
progress ; and it is only when resistance to the 
course of things becomes impracticable, that they 
are dragged on reluctantly, more like captives than 
attendants, upon the triumphant march of truth. 

This assuredly may be asserted, that, so far as 
human agency can operate to bring on a better era 
to the church, he who despairs of it, hinders it, to 
the extent of his influence ; while he who expects it 
hastens it so far as it may be accelerated. This 
difference of feeling might even be assumed as 
furnishing a test of character ; and it might be 
affirmed, that when the question of the probable 
revival and spread of Christianity is freely agitated, 
those who embrace the affirmative side are (with 
few exceptions, the persons whose temper of mind 
is the most in harmony with the expected happy 
revolution, and who would, with the greatest readi- 
ness, act their parts in the new and better economy ; 
while on the contrary, those who contentedly or 
despondingly give a long date to existing imper- 
fections and corruptions, may fairly be suspected of 
loving " the things that are" too well. 

There is yet another line of argument, wholly 
independent of the two that have been pursued 
above, in which the general spread of true religion 
.night be made to appear an event probably not very 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 291 

remote ; namely, the argument from prophecy. But 
besides that the subject is by far too large and ser ous 
to be treated hastily, the time is not arrived in 
which it might be discussed with the calmness it 
demands. Yet in passing this subject it may be 
suggested to whose who, notwithstanding that they 
admit the truth of Christianity, constantly deride 
genuine piety whenever it comes in their way, that, 
though the apparent course of events seems to indi- 
cate a gradual improvement, such as would give 
time to oppugners to choose the wiser part, and to 
range themselves quietly in the train of the con- 
quering religion, the general tenor of scriptural pre- 
diction holds out a different prospect, and gives 
great reason to suppose that the final triumph of the 
Gospel is to be ushered in by some sudden and 
vindictive visitation, which shall arrest impiety in 
its full career, and deny for ever to the then im- 
penitent the option of making a better choice. 



NOTES. 



SECTION VIII. 

The following anecdote is reported by Sulpitius, concerning St. 
.Martin of Tours. The Emperor Maximus, a man of a haughty 
temper, and elated by victories over his rivals, had received the un- 
worthy adulation of a crowd of fawning bishops ; while Martin alone 
maintained the apostolic authority. For when suits were to be 
urged, he rather commanded than entreated the royal compliance, 
and refused many solicitations to take a place with others of his 
order at the imperial table, saying, that he would not eat bread with 
a man who had deprived one emperor of his throne, and another of 
life. But at length, when Maximus excused his assumption of the 
purple by pleading the force that had been put upon him by the 
legions, the use he had made of power, and the apparent sanction 
of heaven in the successes with which he had been favored, and 
stated also that he had never destroyed an enemy except in open 
fight, Martin, overcome by reason, or by entreaties, repaired to the 
royal banquet, to the great joy of the emperor. The tables were 
crowded by persons of quality; among them, the brother and uncle 
of Maximus ; between these reclined one of Martin's presbyters ; he 
himself occupied a seat near the emperor. During supper, accord- 
ing to custom, the waiter presented a goblet of wine to the emperor, 
who commanded it rather to be offered to so holy a bishop, from 
whose hand he expected and desired to receive it again. But Mar- 
tin, when he had drank of the cup, handed it to his presbyter, not 
deeming any one present more worthy to drink after himself; nor 
would he have thought it becoming to his character had he pre- 
ferred even the emperor, or those next to him in dignity, to his own 
presbyter. It is added, that Maximus and his officers took this 
contempt in exceeding good part ! — Snip. Sev. de Vita B. Martin. 
cap. xx. 

The same writer reports a not less characteristic incident in honor 
of the holy bishop, in his dialogue concerning the miraculous powers 
of St. Martin. This personage, it seems, was in the habit of fre- 
quenting the palace, where he was always honorably entertained 
by the empress, who not only hung upon his lips for instruction, 
but, in imitation of the penitent mentioned in the gospels, actaally 



NOTES. 293 

Dathed his feet with her tears, and wiped them with her hair ; and 
he, who never before had sustained the touch of woman, could not 
avoid her assiduities. She, unmindful of the state and dignity and 
splendors of her royal rank, lay prostrate at the feet of Martin, 
whence she could not be removed until she had obtained permission, 
first from her husband, and then by his aid from the bishop, to wait 
upon him at table as his servant, without the assistance of any 
menial. The blessed man could no longer resist her importunities ; 
and the empress herself made the requisite preparations of the 
couch, and table, and cookery (in temperate style), and water for 
the hands ; and, as he sat, stood aloof, and motionless, in the man- 
ner proper to a slave ; with due modesty and humility, mixing and 
presenting the wine. And when the meal was ended, reverently 
collected the crumbs, which she deemed of higher worth than the 
delicacies of a royal banquet.— Cap. 6. 

In how short a time may prodigious revolutions take place in the 
sentiments of men ! This monkish bishop was removed by not more 
than three or four lives from the Apostle John ! And this humble 
empress occupied the honors which, within the memory of the exist- 
ing generation, had been sustained by the mother of Galerius ! It 
should be added, that the auditor of the story above related, shocked 
at the inconsistency of St. Martin in thus admitting the offices of a 
woman so near his devoted person, requires from the narrator an 
explanation ; who, in reply, reminds his friend, that the compliance 
of the bishop with the solicitations of the emperor and empress was 
the price by which he obtained, from the former, release and grace 
for the persecuted Priscillianists. The best thing, by far, related of 
the bishop of Tours, is his firmness in opposing persecution. There 
is great reason to believe that, in common with several of the most 
noted characters of church history, his true reputation has been im- 
mensely injured by the ill-judging zeal of his biographer. 



The life of St. Anthony, by the pious and respectable Athanasius, 
would alone afford ample proof of the assertion, that, even in the 
third century, the spirit of fanaticism, and the practices of religious 
knavery, had reached a height scarcely surpassed at any later 
period. 



The first Christian monks followed the Essenes in this particular 
also, that they despised human science ; and it was not until learn- 
ing had been driven from among secular persons, that it took refuge 
in monasteries. If the monks had avoided the infection of the 
philosophy, " falsely so called," which the Platonists brought into 
the church, and instead, had given their leisure to the toils of bibli- 
cal learning, they would not so soon and so completely have spoiled 
Christianity. 



294 NOTES. 

Sulpitius affords abundant illustration of the topics adverted to in 
this section. Perhaps, within so small a compass, the principles and 
practices of the ancient rnonachism are nowhere else so fully brought 
into view, as in his Dialogues and Epistles. He may properly be 
quoted in the present instance. Postumianus, lately returned from 
the east, that is to say, from Egypt, Arabia, and Palestine, describes 
to his astonished brethren of a monastery in Gaul, the abstemious- 
ness of the oriental monks, as well as their piety and marvellous 
exploits. (On his outward voyage Postumianus had gone ashore 
at Carthage to visit the spots dedicated to the saints ; especially — 
ad sepulchrum Cypriani Martyris adorare.) His first specimen of 
a monkish dinner, in the oriental style, was the being invited to 
partake, with four others, of half a barley cake ; to which was added 
a handful of a certain sweet herb, altogether deemed to be — pran- 
dium locupletissimum. Sulpitius hence takes occasion to joke a 
brother, who was present, upon their own comparative appetites ; 
but he replies that it was extremely unkind to urge upon Gauls a 
manner of living proper only to angels. Hearty eating, says he, in 
a Greek, is gluttony ; but in a Gaul—nature. 



SECTION IX. 



The dictates of good sense are often curiously intermingled in the 
writings of the fathers with the defence of the absurd system they 
espoused. The incongruous mixture, has it not been of frequent 
occurrence in every age 1 Cyril of Jerusalem, in the fourth of his 
Catechetical Discourses, and in the section nepi aw/iaroi, with great 
vigor and propriety urges the consideration referred to above, while 
reprehending those, in his time, who affected to despise and mal- 
treat the body. " Is not the body," says he, " the excellent work- 
manship of God V* and he reminds the ascetic that it is the soul, not 
the body, that sins. He goes on, in a lively manner, to hold forth 
the mean of wisdom between opposite extremes ; and while he much 
commends the monkish celibacy, nevertheless bestows upon mat- 
rimony its due praise. The fathers, by appropriating the words 
continence, chastity, temperance, virtue, to the monastic life, robbed 
the Christian community of that standard of morals which belongs 
to all. Our Lord and his apostles enjoined purity, and continence, 
and temperance, and heavenly-mindedness, upon Christians univer- 
sally, married and unmarried, engaged or not engaged, in the 
affairs of common life. But the monks shuddered to talk of purity 
and celibacy as if separable. What part then could the married 
claim in the practical portions of Scripture 1 These holy precepts 
were the property of the elect of Christ, that is, of the monks. Such 
are the consequences of extravagance in religion ! 



NOTES. 295 

The story of Symeon Stylites, told by Theodoret, has been often 
repeated. The well-attested exploits of the fakirs of India render 
this, and many similar accounts related by the same writer, by 
Gregory Nyssen, Sozomen, &c, perfectly credible in all but a few 
of the particulars ; and in these it is evident that the writers were 
imposed upon. The fasts professed to have been undergone by 
Symeon, by Anthony, and by others of the same class, most certainly 
surpass the powers of human nature ; and must be held either to 
convict these monks and their accomplices of fraud, or their biogra- 
phers of falsehood. 



Ignatius must be held to have set an example of unhappy conse- 
quence to the church. His ardor for martyrdom, though unques- 
tionably connected with genuine and exalted piety, was altogether 
unwarranted by apostolic precept or example, and stands in the 
strongest contrast imaginable with the manner of Paul, when placed 
in similar circumstances, whose calm, manly, and spirited defence 
of his life, liberty, and civic immunities, on every occasion, imparts 
the highest possible argumentative value to his sufferings in the 
cause of Christianity. Let it be imagined that Ignatius had acquitted 
himself in the same spirit ; had pleaded with Trajan for his life, on 
the grounds of universal justice, and Roman law ; had established 
his innocence of any crime known to the law ; and had then pro- 
fessed distinctly the reasons of his Christian profession ; and at the 
same time calmly declared his determination to die rather than deny 
his convictions. How precious a document would have been the 
narrative of such a martyrdom ! There can be no doubt that many 
such martyrdoms actually took place; but they were less to the 
taste of the church historians of the third and fourth centuries than 
those that were made conspicuous by an ostentation of eagerness to 
die. The First Epistle of Peter holds forth the principle and temper 
of Christian submission under persecution with a dignity, calmness, 
pathos, good sense, and a perfect freedom from fanatical excitement, 
which, if no other document of our faith were extant, would fully 
carry the proof of the truth of Christianity. 



No serious consideration need be given to those miraculous nar- 
ratives which exist only in biographies composed in a turgid style 
of laudatory exaggeration, and not published, or not fairly and fully 
published, till long after the deaths of the operator, and of the wit- 
nesses. An instance precisely in point is the life of Gregory of 
Neocaesarea. by Gregory Nyssen : another of like kind has also been 
frequently quoted — the life of St. Martin, by Sulpitius Severus : the 
life of Cyprian, by his Deacon Pontius, might be included ; as well 
as that of St. Anthony, by Athanasius. In passing, it may be ob- 
served that a perusal of the last-mentioned tract, which fills only 
some fifty pages, would convey a more exact and vivid idea of the 



296 NOTES. 

state and style of religion in the fourth century, than is to be ob- 
tained by reading volumes of modern compilations of church history. 
At once the piety and the strong sense of the writer, and the ex- 
traordinary character of the narrative, give it a peculiar claim to at- 
tention. Let the intelligent reader of this curious document take the 
occasion to estimate the value and amount of the information thai 
is to be received from modern writers — even the best of them, such 
as Mosheim and Milner, for example, of whom the first gives the 
mere husk of church history, and the other only some separated 
particles of pure farina. But can we in either of these methods ob- 
tain the solid and safe instruction which a true knowledge of human 
character and conduct should convey 1 It may be very edifying to 
read page after page of picked sentiments of piety ; but do these 
culled portions, which actually belie the mass whence they are 
taken, communicate what an intelligent reader of history looks for — 
namely, a real picture and image of mankind in past ages 1 Cer- 
tainly not. If nothing be wanted but pleasing expressions of Chris- 
tian feeling, there can be no need to make a painful search for 
them in the bulky tomes of the Greek and Latin fathers. Neverthe- 
less, with all its defects, Milner' s Church History is one of the best 
that has been compiled. A modern reader, led astray by the malign 
falsifications of Gibbon, and very partially informed of facts by 
church historians, has no means of correctly estimating the state of 
Christianity in remote times ; or none but that of examining for him- 
self the literary remains of ecclesiastical antiquity. 



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1 



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ADDENDA.— Feb. 1853. 

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I 



